‘Calypso’ is Qualcomm’s next-gen SoC for the Project Aluminium era

The Chromium Gerrit is currently lighting up with a series of new commits for a new Qualcomm SoC codenamed “Calypso.” This isn’t just a minor driver tweak for existing hardware; developers have officially added the initial SoC skeleton for Calypso, signaling the start of a brand-new hardware family for the ChromeOS (and likely Project Aluminium) ecosystem.

Alongside the chip itself, we are seeing the emergence of a new development board called Mensa. In the world of Chromebook development, these reference boards serve as the “blueprint” that manufacturers use to build retail devices. The arrival of Mensa suggests that Google is prepping a high-performance reference design specifically tailored for this new Qualcomm silicon.

Signs of power: PCIe, QSPI, and more

The commits for Calypso reveal a chip designed for modern, high-bandwidth computing. Unlike some of the budget-friendly Arm chips we’ve seen in the past, Calypso is being built with “desktop-class” features from day one:

• Advanced Connectivity: Developers have already enabled basic PCIe support for the SoC, which is critical for supporting the fast NVMe storage and high-end peripherals that will likely be required by Project Aluminium.
• Speedy Boot Times: Commits show the initialization of QSPI and QUPv3 in the bootblock, ensuring the device can handle high-speed data transfer right from the moment you hit the power button.
• Optimized Performance: There are already placeholders in the code for early clock initialization, suggesting Qualcomm is focusing heavily on power efficiency and performance scaling for its next-generation cores.

The Project Aluminium Connection

Google has, over the past number of months, confirmed that they are re-baselining ChromeOS onto the Android kernel: a massive transition codenamed Project Aluminium.

One of the primary goals of this merger is to better take advantage of high-performance Arm processors and AI capabilities. While the current Snapdragon X Plus is a great bridge that is already in development for some upcoming devices, Calypso may turn out to be the first SoC built to fully realize the “converged” vision of Project Aluminium. By the time this new OS launches, Calypso-powered devices like those based on the Mensa board could very well become the flagship hardware leading the charge. Stay tuned!