Mediatek MT8195-based Chromebooks

I’ve been having a look at the various ARM-based computers that are due to hit the market over the next year and the announcement that interested me the most was Mediatek’s MT8195 chipset. This is a Cortex A78 based board that is intended for use in Chromebooks. Mediatek are currently the biggest supplier of ARM SoCs for Chromebooks. Their fastest board at present is the MT8183 which is based on the Cortex A73. The MT8195 should represent a huge leap forward for ARM Chromebooks in terms of closing the performance gap with x86-based machines as discussed here.

Via the RISC OS on Linux port we should be able to run RISC OS on these new Chromebooks fairly quickly after their release. ChromeOS is based on Linux and full versions of Linux tend to arrive soon after a new Chromebook is released. If we had a RISC OS-style GUI to put on top of Linux with a program launcher to run RISC OS software via ROL then you’d have quite a slick, bang up to date system.

Depending on Apple’s hardware plans it might even be possible to get RISC OS on the A78 before MacOS.

Chrome OS is closed and Apple is even more closed is so I doubt it.

The MT8183-based Lenovo Chromebook Duet came out in July and was added to the Linux kernel the following month. Why wouldn’t the next generation be similar?

I came across this article while checking for news on next gen Mediatek Chromebooks: https://community.arm.com/developer/ip-products/processors/b/processors-ip-blog/posts/rise-of-chromebooks

Something quite nostalgic about ARM extolling the virtues of computers based on their chips for use in classrooms!

Support for the MT8192 SoC has been added to the Linux kernel already, so it should be possible to install some form of Linux immediately after the first machines launch. As I understand it, the ChromeOS approach is to have a full Linux distribution installed alongside ChromeOS and use it to run Linux apps launched via the ChromeOS UI. I’d be very curious to see how well this works with the RISC OS on Linux port.

Support for the MT8192 SoC has been added to the Linux kernel already.

Of course it is. After all, ChromeOS used a Linux kernel :)

Fair point! Still, Google are committed to every new Chromebook being able to run Linux apps so a distro should be available either at launch or fairly soon afterwards.

Chrome OS is closed, but Chromium OS is open. The major differences between the two are the closed-source codec, DRM, and other pieces that Google puts into the Chrome browser vs. the Chromium browser, and also the Android compatibility hasn’t been open-sourced. But none of that should matter if you’re interested in booting RISC OS on a Chromebook.

I don’t have any recent ARM Chromebooks to play with, and I’m unlikely to buy one, but I believe they’re currently using coreboot as the bootloader? I was worried that you had to use UEFI + ACPI, but it looks like coreboot can load any ELF executable you want to give it, if you’ve enabled developer mode (although you can’t replace the Google-signed bootloader itself). And the older ARM Chromebooks use U-Boot.

Rewriting the necessary device drivers to avoid GPL copyrights may be the biggest hurdle. The info I’ve found on FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD on ARMv7 Chromebooks all seems fairly outdated (lots of talk of Samsung Exynos, but no ARMv8-A). But at least Google isn’t standing in your way: you can enable developer mode and boot any ELF kernel for any OS you’d like.

The HP Chromebook x360 13b-ca0xxx (google-dojo) is supported by the main-line linux kernel (6.9 and onwards)
Using RISC OS on Linux is then straight forward.
On my Chromebook I get impressive benchmarks for RISC OS.