World’s largest chipmaker Intel Corporation on Wednesday launched a PC platform developed exclusively to meet the needs of rural population in India.

The "Community PC" platform, designed as a result of defining locally relevant computing solutions powered by Intel, can operate in a community setting even while accommodating varying environmental conditions prevalent in a vast country like India.

Intel’s "Jagruti" (which means awakening) initiative aims to bridge the urban-rural divide. The chipmaker said it is designed to provide rural communities greater economic and social opportunities.

The Jagruti programme will collaborate with business stalwarts and leaders in government, education, online services and Internet service providers, with a view to spurring the spread of Internet kiosks in rural areas powered by the new Intel Community PC.

These kiosks will help accelerate access to the benefits of information and communications technologies (ICT) in villages across India.

Intel said it carried out ethnographic studies in rural areas which found out that the rural population and various communities clearly desired access to tedchnology.

Intel found that adverse weather conditions and unavailability and reliability of power were the impediments.

Intel’s hopes to address all these issues through the Community PC platform which has a reliable, manageable system to support remote diagnostics.

It also has a ruggedized chassis to withstand dusty conditions, fluctuating temperatures and high humidity.

Community PC also has a removable dust filter and an air fan to regulate temperature on motherboard.

The PC’s Customized Power Supply Unit comprises of an Integrated Power Supply and an Uninterruptible Power Supply unit, to function even in times of power outage. The power consumption will also be less than 100 watts.

Intel hopes to deploy the Community PC platforms at Internet "kiosks" in Indian villages.