What to make to this? Marvell, has stepped up their commitment to an XO-3 with $5.6 million dollar grant to One Laptop per Child for XO-3 laptop development through 2011. As Nicholas Negroponte tells Xconomy:

"Their money is a grant to the OLPC Foundation to develop a tablet or tablets based on their chip," he says. "They're going to put the whole system on a chip."

Yet past that seemingly simple announcement, I get very confused.

First, Negroponte says that OLPC & Marvell will show something "concrete" at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 2011 that:



Marvel's $100 Moby tablet

May or may not be a working prototype Not directly relate to the XO 3 Be modeled partly on the Moby tablet for education Be intended for children in the developed world Use the Android operating system And "definitely not have our [OLPC] brand. It's a First World machine,"

Next, Negroponte says the actual XO-3, which will follow the CES 2011 computer, will not be ready until 2012. The XO-3 will use Linux, be targeted at the developing world, and use a plastic form factor with a dual-mode display.

So that makes me wonder what, exactly, that Marvell is funding? If XO-3 development, wouldn't that last till the product launch in 2012? If the interim Marvell device, why is it so different from the XO-3? And last but not least, why $5.6 million? That seems like such an odd number.