Once upon a time, the Chromebox form-factor appeared to be on the endangered species list. However, two years later, the small Chrome OS desktop has seen a resurgence into the market with Kaby Lake boxes from most of the big-name Chromebook makers as well as new entrants from companies like CTL and Promethean.
With a variety of use cases that range from traditional desktop setups to digital signage and kiosks, Chromeboxes offer a cost-effective alternative to Windows PC and are easily managed via Google’s Admin Console. Now, with the rise of Stadia, Chromeboxes could find even more popularity as an alternative to pricey gaming rigs. For a device that was once on the chopping block, Chromeboxes seem to have secured their immediate future and now we’ve unearthed evidence that the next generation of models is already in the works.
Built on the Intel Comet Lake processors that will power the next wave of Chromebooks in 2020, baseboard ‘Puff’ was recently added to the repositories under the ‘Hatch‘ family of devices. The initial code for ‘Puff’ references Cannon Lake which is Intel’s Kaby Lake-based 10nm processor but we know from Kyle Bradshaw’s report that Chrome OS opted to skip over this chipset along with the Ice Lake family. Further investigation into the devices overlay file clearly shows that the board will in fact be a Chromebox and that it will house the Comet Lake processor from Intel.
chipset-cml:base
Puff baseboard file
doappid “{2514829E-8550-4E24-91F2-331AB7A12B03}” “CHROMEBOX”
Puff ebuild file
The addition of ‘Puff’ is very recent with the initial build being added back in late September. It’s possible that we could see a Comet Lake Chromebox announced at some point in the first quarter of 2020 but I don’t think we can expect them to hit the market before the summer. That said, it wouldn’t be unheard of for a company like ASUS to have a shell of the new Chromebox at CES but I’m not holding my breath.
