Santa Clara, California (May 8, 2006) – arvell (NASDAQ: MRVL), the leader in storage, communications and consumer silicon solutions, announced today it has become a corporate sponsor of the “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) initiative. By supporting the OLPC program, Marvell will provide the wireless networking technology for a program designed to enhance primary and secondary education through the implementation and delivery of a $100 laptop computer to under-equipped schoolchildren throughout the world.
“At Marvell, we firmly believe that communications technology can change people’s lives, and we wholeheartedly welcome the opportunity to sponsor the OLPC,” said Dr. Sehat Sutardja, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Marvell Technology Group. “Our wireless networking technology will allow previously under-equipped children to communicate with each other, and their local community, and will allow them to explore the Internet.”
Marvell will provide the WLAN capabilities for the OLPC laptop. The OLPC device is currently in the early stages of development, and is designed to be the size of a standard school notebook. The device will utilize Marvell wireless technology to allow children to communicate with the Internet, community resources and among themselves. Each laptop will act as a node in a mesh peer-to-peer and ad hoc network, allowing several hundred machines to share a single online connection
Established a year ago, the OLPC was created to drive development of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratories’ project to create $100 laptops. The primary goal of the OLPC is to provide children with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves. The organization seeks to make extremely low cost laptop computers that can be manufactured and distributed to literally every child in the world.
The low cost laptops will be purchased and distributed by local governments. Currently agencies in Argentina, Nigeria, Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and India are in preliminary discussions with the OLPC.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a Delaware-based, non-profit organization created by faculty members from the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The laptops will be provided to governments at cost and issued to children by schools on a basis of one laptop per child. These machines will be rugged, Linux-based, and so energy efficient that hand-cranking alone will generate sufficient power for operation. Mesh networking will give many machines Internet access from one connection. The pricing goal is to start at $100 and then steadily decrease.
Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) is the leader in development of storage, communications, and consumer silicon solutions. The company’s diverse product portfolio includes switching, transceiver, communications controller, wireless and storage solutions that power the entire communications infrastructure including enterprise, metro, home and storage networking. As used in this release, the terms “company” and “Marvell” refer to Marvell Technology Group Ltd. And its subsidiaries, including Marvell Semiconductor Inc. (MSI), Marvell Asia Pte Ltd (MAPL), Marvell Japan K.K., Marvell Taiwan Ltd., Marvell International Ltd. (MIL), Marvell U.K. limited, Marvell Semiconductor Israel Ltd. (MSIL), RADLAN Computer Communications Ltd., and SysKonnect GmbH. MSI is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and designs, develops and markets products on behalf of MIL and MAPL. MSI may be contacted at (408) 222-2500 or at www.marvell.com.
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