Death of a PIC

AMD has officially buried the PIC, also known as the Personal Internet Communicator, the device that was going to lead 50% of the world to the Internet by the year 2015. Many of us could see it was doomed from the start. The ugly, heavy looking shoebox had a too-slow Geode GX processor at 533MHz, only 128MB RAM, and no user upgradeable features. Running Windows CE, the thing was pretty slow and what’s worse, it couldn’t support many apps required by websites, let alone handle high quality multimedia. Targeted to be manufactured in and sold to poorer countries, the unit was priced at $185 without monitor and $235 with one, and the price was to be partially subsidized through an ISP contract.

AMD positioned the PIC not as a profit machine but more as a philanthropic vehicle that would help the world while also helping AMD gain market share against Intel. Some say that around AMD the internal meaning of the 50x15 initiative of which PIC was born was really the goal of achieving 50% of the CPU business by 2015.

But it became apparent not too long after the PIC was out that there was trouble. First, AMD moved the PIC out of its Personal Connectivity Solutions Group and into the “other” category in the first half of 2005, a clear sign that the product was losing money. Then a few months later AMD tried selling the unit through U.S. Radio Shack stores. The problem was, in the U.S. there was no ISP subsidy, so the unit at over $200 was sorely lacking when compared with one of Dell’s entry-level boxes.

Some feel that another Geode-based platform, the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child Device), formerly the $100 laptop designed by MIT Media Labs is going to negate the need for the PIC, but judging by the delays and criticism of this device, I’m not too convinced that it will be a success, either. Getting access to the internet is getting cheaper and cheaper these days, thanks to the rapid evolution of smart phones and the availability of low-cost full-function laptop PCs, and it’s likely that by the time OLCP makes it out the door some schools and governments will adopt instead a laptop or phone that has already been tested and proven.

So goodbye PIC and your relatives, we hardly knew ye but we surely won’t miss ya!

Via Ars Technica