AMD one of the world’s largest chipset manufacturers has unveiled a new microprocessor called Congo. The first netbook based on the technology was announced yesterday in Acer’s Ferrari One. Obviously, AMD drew some negative attention for naming a microchip ‘Congo’ when coltan extraction in DRC has been blamed as one of the many things feuling (and financing) the systematic oppression, ethnic violence, rape and torture in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Coltan is used to make a number of the silicon chips used to manufacture mobile and computing devices.
Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of AMD, Nigel Dessau had this to say via a blog post:
AMD has taken a bit of flack recently because we referred to an upcoming laptop platform using the name of a river, “Congo”, as a code name. Some people took objection to the association ― entirely unintended ― with violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As it happens, because we were moving closer to launch, we were in the midst of transitioning from using the code name to the more descriptive “2nd Generation Ultrathin Platform” ― but that only led some other people to believe that we were bowing to pressure.
I want to set the record straight: here is what happened.
At D7 this year I saw the presentation by playwright and activist Eve Ensler on the issue of “rape-free products.” I have to admit that before that I was ignorant of the violence taking place in the DRC. You can learn more about what she said here.
At about the same time, others who were educated about this violence started to make the (again, unintended) connection between our product code name (which are meant to be internal but have a way of becoming public) and the tragedy in the DRC, and this made it into some blogs. This was happening as the team was in the process of formally transitioning from the code name to the more formal product name (in the same way, “Yukon” became our “1st Generation Ultrathin Platform”), so we were already referring to the product as our “2nd Generation Ultrathin Platform.”
From Wikipedia: Coltan is the colloquial African name for columbite – tantalite, a dull black, metallic ore from which the elements niobium (formerly “columbium”) and tantalum are extracted. The niobium-dominant mineral is columbite, hence the “col” half of the term. Coltan smuggling has also been implicated as a major source of income for the military occupation of Congo. An activist website, Toward Freedom, states that the search for coltan has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo; they state that demand for coltan has caused Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to seek hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country’s coltan mines.
What do you think. Is there a need for conflict-free computers and mobile devices?
About the author: Jonathan Gosier is a software developer, writer and social entrepreneur. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he incubates and invests in East African entrepreneurs as the CEO of Appfrica Labs. He's also a TED Fellow.
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AMD’s Congo Processor and Conflict-Free Computing
AMD one of the world’s largest chipset manufacturers has unveiled a new microprocessor called Congo. The first netbook based on the technology was announced yesterday in Acer’s Ferrari One. Obviously, AMD drew some negative attention for naming a microchip ‘Congo’ when coltan extraction in DRC has been blamed as one of the many things feuling (and financing) the systematic oppression, ethnic violence, rape and torture in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Coltan is used to make a number of the silicon chips used to manufacture mobile and computing devices.
Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of AMD, Nigel Dessau had this to say via a blog post:
From Wikipedia: Coltan is the colloquial African name for columbite – tantalite, a dull black, metallic ore from which the elements niobium (formerly “columbium”) and tantalum are extracted. The niobium-dominant mineral is columbite, hence the “col” half of the term. Coltan smuggling has also been implicated as a major source of income for the military occupation of Congo. An activist website, Toward Freedom, states that the search for coltan has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo; they state that demand for coltan has caused Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to seek hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country’s coltan mines.
What do you think. Is there a need for conflict-free computers and mobile devices?