MediaTek launches new Kompanio 838 chipset for Chromebooks

Ever since Apple dropped Intel and made the switch to its own Arm-based chipsets for its Mac computers, there has been renewed interest in the space. This is why we’re not surprised that MediaTek is hoping to grab a slice of that pie with its latest chipset, the Kompanio 838.

MediaTek is no stranger when it comes to Arm-based chipsets designed for computers. The company unveiled its Kompanio 500 chipset back in 2019, a year before Apple announced the Apple Silicon. But with the MediaTek Kompanio 838, the company is hoping that their new chipset will be used to power premium Chromebooks.

So what can we expect from these chipsets? According to MediaTek, the new chipset will come with features like support for dual 4K displays. It will also feature hardware accelerated AV1 video decoding, making it ideal to stream video up to 4K in resolution. It also offers AI capabilities with the MediaTek NPU 650, along with support for WiFi 6 and 6E. The company claims that this will unlock faster connectivity speeds of up to 1.9Gbps, more reliable connections, and enhanced security.

The Kompanio 838 is built on the 6nm process. It features an octa-core CPU configuration that consists of 2x Arm Cortex-A78 cores clocked at 2.6GHz, and 6x Arm Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 2.0GHz. It supports LPDDR4x RAM, and comes with an integrated Arm Mali-G57 MC3 GPU.

So far Lenovo is the first company to confirm that they will be using these new chipsets for their Chromebooks. We expect more will follow later.