Small Laptop, Big Splash

Two schoolgirls use One Laptop Per Child's XO-1 computer outside Arahay, Peru, where testing of the laptop began in May 2007. (Courtesy of One Laptop Per Child)

Publication Date：04/01/2008
Byline：GLENN SMITH

Thanks to the help of Taiwan's Quanta Computer and the Chi Mei Group, the One Laptop Per Child project will improve the education of millions of schoolchildren.

Most of the world's children live in dire poverty. For them, education is an extravagance and textbooks are a luxury. Many dwell at latitudes near the equator, and what schooling they receive is often outdoors. Even when there are classrooms, electricity is lacking, or, where it is available, so unstable that it is ill suited to powering anything more sophisticated than an incandescent bulb. Needless to say, for these children and their teachers, many of whom lack extensive education themselves, contact with richer lands is limited. Telephones are rare and the Internet exists only in the world of make-believe.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman emeritus of the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), sought a remedy. His solution was a digital device that came to be dubbed the "$100 laptop" by the world press, although the manufacturing cost has now risen to about US$200.

True, Negroponte's device looks like a laptop, but it represents something much grander. Today known as the XO-1, and with an estimated 500,000 units manufactured to date, it is the heart of a global educational effort called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

The XO-1, as originally envisioned by Negroponte, would be a technological Swiss Army knife for educators in the Third World. The device would serve as blackboard, textbook, library and communication tool connecting students, parents and teachers. In rural areas, far from wireless access points, each student's machine would spontaneously link into a wireless mesh network. And, to counter the scarcity of electricity, it would boast ultra-low power consumption, less than one-tenth that of a commercial laptop. Although intended for use by children, the device would be ruggedized to near-military specifications, capable of resisting shock and withstanding the moisture of the tropics and the dust of desserts. Its screen would be readable in blinding tropical sunlight. Unlike other laptops, it would never be sold at retail, except as an incentive in charity fundraisers. Instead, the XO-1 would be ordered by governments, which in turn would distribute the machine free to children through schools, and its price would never be fixed, but would scale inversely with production volume.

The world press was skeptical when Negroponte announced his plan for a "children's machine" and his founding of OLPC in January 2005.

Yet, at OLPC, things happened fast. One of Negroponte's first and most important hires was OLPC's chief technology officer Mary Lou Jepsen. Together, they recruited a handful of employees and organized a volunteer network of thousands of open source software engineers. Corporate partners soon came on board. First to join were Google, chipmaker AMD and media conglomerate News Corp. They were soon followed by eBay, telecom equipment maker Nortel Networks, distributor Brightstar, satellite communication provider SES Group and software maker Red Hat, among others. Work on the prototype was soon underway.

Just one little detail remained, however--somebody, somewhere would have to build the miracle machine. Actually, an anticipated 50 million units.

Linked to Taiwan

Nearly a year passed before a manufacturer joined hands with OLPC, and when it did, the partnership linked the project's fate firmly to Taiwan.

In December 2005, Barry Lam, chairman of Quanta Computer, agreed to manufacture the XO-1. Then, in April 2006, a second Taiwan technology group, Chi Mei Optoelectronics, joined at the urging of the conglomerate's octogenarian founder and philanthropist, Shi Wen-lung.

Describing Taiwan's contribution to OLPC, Negroponte says, "We have worked so closely with Taiwan, at such a fine granularity, on a day-to-day basis, by email, conference calls and uncountable visits, that it is hard to separate OLPC, Quanta and Chi Mei. We have been one, far more than any normal vendor-customer relationship. It has been a real partnership."

Without Taiwan and the critical role its manufacturers play in the global electronics supply chain, the XO-1 would never have been built.

In some ways, Quanta was a natural for OLPC, as it is the world's leading producer of laptops. Industry heavyweights Dell, IBM, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, Sony, Sharp and Fujitsu, among others, rely on Quanta for their notebooks. Quanta has become a highly sought-after partner that offers quality while controlling costs.

Nicholas Negroponte founded OLPC in 2005 to improve education in the Third World. (Courtesy of One Laptop Per Child)

Lam founded Quanta in 1988. Born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong, he earned two engineering degrees at National Taiwan University. In 1973, along with several classmates, he founded Kimpo, a maker of handheld calculators. Later, in the mid-1980s, believing that computing was going mobile and that laptops represented the future of the industry, Lam and some of Kimpo's employees founded Quanta. Today, in addition to laptops, Quanta makes just about everything digital. Sales exceed US$10 billion annually and Quanta employs 30,000 people. Some 3,500 of the company's employees--mostly engineers--work in its US$200 million, 205,000-square-meter Quanta Research & Development Center (QRDC) in the foothills of Taoyuan County. Completed in late 2005, QRDC is Quanta's administrative and engineering center, while production has shifted from Taiwan to China in recent years.

Back on November 16, 2005 as Quanta engineers were settling into their new quarters, Negroponte and Jepsen were halfway around the globe at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia. Along with former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, they unveiled a working prototype known as CM-1, which was designed by Jepsen, industrial design firm Design Continuum, MIT faculty members, Negroponte, Red Hat and AMD. It was Jepsen's job to marshall the CM-1 into existence during the two sleep-deprived months leading up to the UN summit.

The media went wild at the sight of the computer, and soon the toy-like, green and white OLPC laptop with its lofty humanitarian ambitions became the unofficial smiley face of global technology.

This news was duly noted in Taiwan's technology community, and particularly at Quanta, which collaborates on research projects with MIT.

At the time, OLPC still did not have a manufacturer, and Quanta had already turned down the project twice. However, within weeks of the world summit, Lam and Quanta gave the go-ahead.

Today, the head of the project at Quanta is Dandy Hsu, general manager and vice president of the company's Educational Product Business Unit and one of two OLPC board members in Taiwan.

Hsu says bringing the XO-1 to mass production took Quanta nearly two years--an eternity by original design manufacturing /original equipment manufacturing (ODM/OEM) standards.

A couple of decades ago, US, European and Japanese technology companies provided detailed plans when contracting with factories in Taiwan to build their products. That was during the heyday of Taiwan's OEM business. Now, under the ODM system, the world's top brand owners prepare a prototype or list of product attributes, and companies such as Quanta provide the design and engineering know-how needed to ramp up for manufacturing.

ODM requires a high level of expertise, and Quanta has become known for turning around world-class ODM laptops in as little as three months.

No Ordinary Laptop

Obviously, the XO-1 wasn't a typical laptop project. "Normally, when we design a commercial notebook, we have Microsoft's Windows or other software that will run on the device," Hsu explains. Usually hardware engineers design commercial laptops around the requirements of the marketplace's dominant operating systems (OS) and application program interfaces (API), then use these for testing as the design work proceeds.

Mass production of the XO-1 begins at a Quanta Computer facility northwest of Shanghai in November 2007. Co-designer Mary Lou Jepsen stands at far right. (Courtesy of One Laptop Per Child)

Software was not available for the XO-1 because it was being developed simultaneously by OLPC, which oversaw a team of volunteer engineers designing a Linux-based OS for the XO-1 and writing code for its open source application programs.

For Quanta, the lack of an operating system and applications slowed hardware development. "This made the process long and complicated," Dandy Hsu says. "We'd make assumptions in the design, but later, when we got the software, we would need to make changes to the hardware."

Engineers faced other surprises. In March 2006, when the XO-1 motherboards were ready for testing, OLPC held a "country conference," which was attended by "delegates" from the governments that intended to purchase the machine. The result was a decision to upgrade the XO-1 with a more powerful CPU. This was no minor modification.

"Change the CPU and you're talking about a completely new machine," Hsu says.

Then, later in March, came devastating news. Quanta had recently completed the sale of its subsidiary, Quanta Display, and new owner AU Optronics decided not to manufacture the XO-1 screen, the most critical component of the project.

The XO-1 appeared dead. OLPC's chief technology officer, Mary Lou Jepsen, disappointed and exhausted from more than a year of intense work for OLPC, left Taiwan for home. Hours later, she was near death as well, having gone into adrenal failure on the flight to Boston.

Resurrection

In April 2006, two weeks after her illness, Jepsen returned to Taiwan and approached the Chi Mei Group, a Tainan-based conglomerate, to ask if it would manufacture the XO-1's display.

"Mary Lou is one of the heroes of this project--a selfless, beautiful thing," says Scott Soong of Chi Mei subsidiary Chi Lin Technology. Soong is the other OLPC board member in Taiwan, along with Quanta's Dandy Hsu.

Chi Mei was founded by Shi Wen-lung in 1959. Also known affectionately as Founder Shi, Shi's life is a classic rags-to-riches tale. Shi moved into plastics in 1968, and today his company is the world's largest producer of ABS plastic, and his empire spans petrochemicals, construction, trading and logistics, food and most recently information technology. True to form, Chi Mei Optoelectronics, founded in 1997, already ranks among the world's largest makers of TFT-LCD displays. By 2006, the Chi Mei Group had net sales of more than US$10.5 billion and employed more than 36,000 workers.

Founder Shi, who as a boy longed for a violin his parents could not afford, now collects the world's rarest masterpieces. He is also one of Taiwan's leading philanthropists, and the concept behind the project appealed to him.

Negotiations between Chi Mei and OLPC were quick. In May 2006, Jepsen and Negroponte both came to Taiwan to sign formal contracts.

"It was so interesting to see how Founder Shi made the decision to join," Jepsen recalls. "It was just a gut decision that it was the right thing to do. He was so happy that he brought us to his office and took out his favorite Stradivarius violin and played It's a Small World. That just wouldn't happen in any other country I know of."

Quanta's towering research and development center in Taoyuan County, northern Taiwan (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

Then Chi Mei marshaled the resources of its subsidiaries and went to work to create the XO-1 display. Chi Mei Optoelectronics designed and manufactured the TFT-LCD cells. Himax fabricated the driver integrated circuit (IC) and display controller, and Chi Lin Technology created the backlight assembly.

"The etching of the TFT-LCDs and the design and fabrication of the driver ICs, display controller chip and backlight assembly all happened here in Tainan," Chi Lin's Scott Soong says.

By August 2006, Chi Lin Technology had a working prototype of the XO-1's dual-mode screen. Jepsen says that without Scott Soong, "the display would not exist. He found ways around the seemingly impassable roadblocks during the design and production process."

"In the concept, the engineering ... we did that fairly quickly; then it was tweaking and tweaking and tweaking," Soong says.

Later, Chi Mei assembled the Taiwan-made display components at its LCD factories in China.

Another Chi Mei contribution is the plastic housing, the fabulously cheerful green and white material that makes the XO-1 so recognizable.

Summing up, Soong says, "I'll be honest with you. What Chi Mei has done is build a world-class display nearly at cost. This is not just another project for us. Nobody wanted to let this project down. Everybody went above and beyond to ensure success."

"That is true for Quanta, and that is true for us," he says. "And true for all of the other partners."

Supply Chain Wizardry

Unlike the Chi Mei Group, which relied solely on in-group talent and resources to engineer the XO-1 display, Quanta had to work with more than 100 outside component suppliers. Ninety-two percent of the XO-1 is made in Taiwan, according to a parts count offered by Jepsen, but today that means designed in Taiwan and manufactured in China. Only 4 percent of Taiwan's electronics are currently made on the island, while 85 percent are fabricated and assembled at Taiwanese-owned factories in China.

In terms of logistics, Quanta performed some amazing feats of supply chain wizardry. From March 2006, when OLPC switched CPUs, to November 2007, when mass production began, Quanta churned out a series of builds--versions B1, B2, B3, B4 and finally B5--incorporating changes requested by OLPC testers as well as inspired, last minute innovations by the OLPC software team. Each request and innovation, in turn, required changes from Quanta's in-house engineers and hundreds of outside suppliers. Finally, when the last beta version was approved, mass production kicked off at Quanta Changshu Manufacture City, a Quanta subsidiary located northwest of Shanghai.

Chi Mei subsidiary Chi Lin Technology builds the XO-1's display. (Courtesy of Chi Lin Technology)

Jepsen, on hand to witness the first XO-1s coming off the assembly line, says, watching the first machine roll off the assembly line "was just so hard to witness. The dream that every one said was impossible--it was finally becoming real."

Critics and Rivals

Inexpensive laptops, governments helping children, ground breaking technology--who could find fault with that? Surprisingly, a lot of people.

A Google search for "$100 laptop" yields a long list of news stories scoffing at the very notion, laughing at OLPC for missing production deadlines and ridiculing the XO-1's fluctuating price. An often-read quip is that the children who will receive the XO-1 would benefit more from a couple of sacks of rice. Some detractors even question why OLPC is giving laptops to the destitute. To such criticism, Negroponte says that if the word "education" were substituted for "laptop," there wouldn't be much cynics could say. In other words, people see the XO-1 as a hardware device and forget it has been designed to solve education problems in the Third World.

In the end, though, imitation could be the sincerest form of flattery.

Bill Edwards, chief strategy officer at AMD, the company that supplies the CPU for the XO-1, described it as the "first fundamental revisit of personal computer architecture since IBM launched the PC in 1981."

Ironically, first and foremost among the imitators is AMD's fierce competitor Intel, the world's dominant maker of CPUs and other semiconductors. Throughout 2005, Intel lambasted the XO-1 in the press, before inexplicably launching a rival, the ClassmatePC. Next, in 2007, Intel did an about-face, declaring support for OLPC by joining its board, but within months Intel left the board amidst allegations that the company had attempted to persuade OLPC customers to switch to the ClassmatePC.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, pleaded with OLPC to replace the XO-1's open source software with a dumbed down version of Microsoft Windows XP. When that failed, Microsoft began marketing a stripped down version of its XP operating system to be sold in the Third World. The price? Reportedly US$3.00.

In short, the XO-1 is "disruptive technology" that has upset the global hardware and software applecart.

Microsoft and Intel, dubbed the "Wintel Duopoly" by many in the computer press, stand to lose a lot if the XO-1 is adopted across the Third World. If OLPC succeeds, a large percentage of the world's population will have their first computing experience on non-Wintel machines. They might never want to switch.

It is ironic that a nonprofit group making a little green and white laptop called the XO-1 for less than US$200 is changing the way the heavy hitters of the computer business play the game. Thanks to the contributions of Taiwan's Quanta and Chi Mei, a half-million schoolchildren have already made the leap into the digital age. Their world--and the computer world--will never be the same.
___________________________
Glenn Smith is a Taipei-based writer who follows emerging technology.

Copyright © 2008 by Glenn Smith

Mary Lou Jepsen is a pioneer in display technologies. At the age of 29, Jepsen co-founded MicroDisplay Corp. and later was director of technology development for Intel's Display Division. She holds a Ph.D. in optics, a B.S. in electrical engineering and a B.A. in studio art, all from Brown University. She also has an M.S. from MIT, where she studied at the Media Lab's Spatial Imaging Group. She served as chief technology officer (CTO) of One Laptop Per Child until the end of December 2007, when she stepped down to form Pixel Qi, a startup dedicated to bringing low-cost information technologies to the retail market.

Taiwan Review contributor Glenn Smith interviewed Jepsen to learn more about Taiwan's part in the OLPC project.

Taiwan Review: Had you ever been to Taiwan before the OLPC project?

Jepsen: I was in Taiwan quarterly when I was at my startup [MicroDisplay]. It built many products in Taiwan.

TR: The story goes that you applied for a professorship at MIT but ended up CTO of OLPC.

Jepsen: In my interview at MIT, I met for what was to be five minutes with Nicholas Negroponte ... Three hours later I agreed [to join OLPC]. Eventually I got the professor job at MIT, but first MIT made me choose. Either I could be a professor or do the laptop.

TR: The laptop initiative was officially announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2005. Were there difficulties getting the project off the ground?

Jepsen: The whole first year it was two people: Nicholas and I ... For the first eight months of 2005, most manufacturers would meet with me as the entertainment portion of their day. They didn't believe the "$100 laptop" was possible.

Even though I'm a display expert, I could not get a display company in Taiwan, nor anywhere else, to bid. But as a display expert I could convince any laptop maker that I could get the display done and that they just had to put the laptop together. The smaller manufacturers bid. By now, Quanta had already said "no" to me, twice.

In the meantime, I prepared a prototype laptop for the United Nations summit on the digital divide [WSIS 2005 in Tunisia] for Kofi Annan to unveil.

Afterwards I went to Taiwan to conclude the bidding process and choose a manufacturer. [Quanta chairman] Barry Lam asked to meet and spent much of the hour with Nicholas and myself, explaining that he couldn't possibly create the laptop. He had already said that he couldn't, but after the UN Summit, I think that even though he couldn't justify it in a business sense, he knew that he would have to make the laptop.

TR: How did staffing grow as the project took shape?

Jepsen: There are about 15 full-time people at OLPC, with two of them in hardware. Volunteers include thousands of application software and content development people. In Taiwan, there were 50 to 100 engineers at Quanta, depending on the load, and another 50 to 100 at Chi Mei Optoelectronics

TR: Did OLPC adhere to a typical engineering style?

Jepsen: We don't follow usual design practices. We live in "ordered chaos," which means frequent changes during the design and prototype process. We felt that unlike a normal product, we really had one chance to get it right and took the time to do so. As a result, a tremendous amount of innovation came together in this laptop very, very quickly.

TR: Were there any moments when you feared the project would result in failure?

Jepsen: Yes, March 2006. I lost my display manufacturer [when Quanta Display was bought by AUO, which discontinued the project]. On the flight home, I went into adrenal failure--the plane was emergency landed for me. I was dying and was rushed to the hospital. Still, I had to fly back to Asia two weeks later to find a new display manufacturer. Those were the darkest hours of the project for me--I was exhausted, but couldn't take a break.

TR: When did light appear at the end of the tunnel?

Jepsen: When we got Chi Mei.

TR: What were the project highs?

Jepsen: The absolute best part has been seeing the children with the laptops and reading the field reports.

TR: You said that the OLPC laptop is, by parts count, 92 percent Taiwanese. What makes Taiwan particularly suited for this kind of project?

Jepsen: Taiwan is focused on cost. South Korea isn't. Japan isn't. In Taiwan, employees can move from company to company easily. This isn't the same in Korea or Japan. The result is more sharing of information and methods.

TR: Does Taiwan have an engineering style that differs from other countries?

Jepsen: Taiwan is more "quick and dirty" than Korea or Japan. That made it a better match for OLPC. Even so, Taiwan is more process-oriented than OLPC.

TR: Would you say that Taiwan has a distinct business style?

Jepsen: I'd say Taiwan business people are fast to make decisions and faster to change them.

TR: How will Quanta and Chi Mei Optoelectronics benefit from their roles in the OLPC project?

Jepsen: Quanta is a public company and it has assured its shareholders it will conduct the project with a view toward profit. They are both making a profit. Everyone associated with this project--everyone I've asked--believes it's the best work they have ever done. They have worked harder on it than anything else they have ever done. ... All of us feel that it's been a great honor to have an opportunity to do this with our skills. Engineers usually don't get a chance to "save the world" in such a tangible way. I think that many in Taiwan (and elsewhere) will continue to seek out similar projects ... that's a great thing for Taiwan.
--Glenn Smith