AMD Connects Millions of Students in China to the Internet
3/30/2006

Beijing — What began early last year as an ambitious partnership between AMD, Lenovo and Dawning to connect 200,000 students in China's Hebei Province to the Internet has grown into a massive nationwide effort in which the three industry partners have already deployed more than 210,000 computers in schools across 18 provinces, enabling literally millions of students in China with computing capability and Internet access.

This is an unprecedented achievement both for AMD's 50x15 initiative and for the IT industry overall.

"AMD's 50x15 success in China is due to the ecosystem approach we've taken with our partners in China," said Billy Edwards, AMD Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer, and executive lead for the company's 50x15 initiative. "Technology is important, but technology alone is not the answer. Creating a model in which digital inclusion becomes sustainable is key and the only way to do that is to establish the right ecosystem of partners - in this case our industry partners Lenovo for desktops and Dawning for servers, State and National government agencies, educational organizations and even local government organizations, school systems and teachers."

AMD's involvement in connecting schools in China began in 2004, when the company partnered with Lenovo and Dawning to bid on what was at the time a government pilot project designed to learn more about the challenges of enabling schools around the country with Internet access.

Earlier that year, the Chinese government had announced a massive information strategy designed to propel the country to the forefront of global technology and business leadership within 15 years. The education component of this national information strategy is called the Rural Remote Education Project (RREP) and is intended to connect all schools across the country, particularly schools in remote and underdeveloped areas, to the Internet.

As a prelude to the national effort, government officials decided to launch a pilot program in Hebei to learn more about the feasibility and challenges of undertaking a full-up national effort. After developing a framework for the pilot, the Ministries of Education and information, and the government of Hebei issued a national RFP. AMD, Lenovo and Dawning responded and won the bid. Lenovo provided desktop computers based on AMD Sempron™ processors and Dawning provided servers based on AMD Opteron™ processors.

By mid-2005, the industry team had deployed more than 26,000 AMD processor-based computers in schools across Hebei and had connected more than 200,000 students. The government was so impressed with the results, it awarded the three partners additional contracts to proceed with similar deployments in 17 additional provinces throughout the country.

Plans are to continue this work through 2006 at the same scale. We'll continue to update our readers throughout the year on our 50x15 success in China.

According to the latest figures from the Internet World Stats web site, which AMD uses as its primary source of global Internet penetration data, 111 million Chinese citizens are regular Internet users. This equates to 8.5 percent of China's total population of about 1.3 billion people.

For more on the history of Internet connectivity in China, refer to this extremely well-researched and engaging article on Computer World's web site. It's called "Networking A Place in Chinese History," and it is worthwhile read.