Challenge: Design a computer lab for developing world

AMD is sponsoring a new $250,000 prize challenge that calls on architecture companies to design a computer lab for use in developing nations around the world.

Called the Open Architecture Prize, the contest was announced on Friday at the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in California - an invitation-only event that draws roughly 1,000 executives, celebrities, politicians and scientists. AMD set up the challenge with Architecture for Humanity, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes building and design services for the underserved.

Architecture for Humanity is the brainchild of architect Cameron Sinclair, who won a $100,000 grant from the TED Prize in 2006 so he could do something to change the world. He's spent that money, along with other donations, to create the Open Architecture Network, an open source community for sustainable and humanitarian building that launched last week.

If successful, the prize could help further AMD's 50x15 initiative, a programme the company introduced at the World Economic Forum in 2004 to connect 50 per cent of the world's population to the internet by 2015. To accomplish that goal, AMD must propagate learning labs, technology and connectivity in underserved nations. The $250,000 prize will be given to the architecture company or individual with the best design of a computer lab "that can be adapted to local needs and built in communities around the world", according to AMD.

Sinclair said in a statement: "For far too long many great award-winning designs have gone undeveloped." With this prize, he said: "We are not only challenging the creative world to design innovative structures, we are going one step further and implementing the winning solution to positively affect thousands of lives."

Stefanie Olsen writes for CNET News.com