Citing "philosophical" differences, semiconductor company Intel has pulled out of the One Laptop Per Child project, removing funding and technical help from the effort. The One Laptop Per Child project, which functions as a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, assorted technology companies, the open source software community and other interests, is an effort to place laptops in the hands of children in the developing world.

According to BBC News, Intel, which joined the One Laptop Per Child project, was expected to create a version of the machine that used an Intel chip. Many expected this machine to be unveiled at the CES technology fair, which will open in Las Vegas on January 5th.

The first versions of the OLPC or XO laptop were powered by a chip made by Intel's arch-rival AMD.

Intel spokesman Chuck Molly said it had made the decision to resign from the OLPC board and end its involvement because the organization had asked it to stop backing rival low-cost laptops. The company has been promoting its own low-cost laptop, the Classmate, in many of the countries that the One Laptop Per Child project is targeting its efforts.

"OLPC had asked Intel to end our support for non-OLPC platforms, including the Classmate PC, and to focus on the OLPC platform exclusively," said Mr Mulloy . "At the end of the day, we decided we couldn't accommodate that request."

He added that the use of AMD chips in the first XO laptops had not influenced its decision.

Though the One Laptop Per Child project has yet to comment on the split, founder Nicholas Negroponte has criticized Intel for what he labeled efforts to undermine the project's work, stating that Intel was selling its Classmate laptop at a loss to beat the One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop on price (the final cost per laptop has been estimated around US$188, despite Negroponte's goal of creating a laptop which ran for US$100 that could be sold to countries that otherwise wouldn't be able to afford them).

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