Quanta Computer Inc., the world's largest maker of notebook computers, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) Friday announced they will undertake a five-year joint research and development (R&D) project to develop a future generation of portable computing devices.

The US$20 million project, called TParty, will aim to develop "smart" portable devices that eliminate the need for users to manage information transfers, security, upgrades and backups, Quanta and MIT said in a statement. Achieving this goal will require reengineering and extending current technologies, developing new interfaces and exploring new ways to access and manage information, the statement said.

Through these efforts, the TParty project will aim to develop a class of computing device that goes beyond the computing and communication capabilities of personal computers, the statement said.

Few specifics of the joint R&D project have so far been released, except for the allocation of financial resources and a broad research mandate. Under the agreement announced on Friday, the two partners plan to establish an R&D team that will be based at CSAIL's lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The R&D partnership brings together one of the world's top universities with one of the most important hardware makers in the IT industry.

Quanta produces roughly one-fourth of the world's notebook computers, manufacturing them by the millions each year under contract for IBM Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., and Dell Inc. The company is currently building a $150 million R&D center in Taiwan that can house up to 7,000 R&D engineers. The center is expected to be start operations during the third quarter of this year, according to Quanta.

IDG News Service

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