Development of ‘Skywalker’ Chromebook with MediaTek MT8189 is moving forward

Back in the middle of summer, I came across a new Chromebook development board that houses yet another new MediaTek SoC: the MT8189. To catch you up, we have the recently launched MediaTek Kompanio 838 (MT8188) that ships in the new Lenovo Chromebook Duet 11″, the upcoming MT8196 that looks to bring high-end performance to at least a couple Chromebooks in 2025 (‘Rauru’, ‘Hylia’ and ‘Navi’), and then we have the somewhat-mysterious MT8189 in ‘Skywalker’.

For now, we don’t know what cores are in this SoC, so I can’t say exactly how powerful it will be. From a numbers perspective, going from MT8188 to MT8189 would look like an iterative bump. However, when we compare the MT8195 (Kompanio 1380) to the upcoming MT8196, you can see a pretty stark difference in overall computing power even with just a single digit separating their model numbers:

As you can see, a bump up in just one number from MT8195 to MT8196 is a pretty substantial move, so there’s a chance the same could be true of the MT8188 and MT8189. Until I find a bit more about the core layout, however, it’ll be tough to tell. If we could get near this same 2x power bump over the Kompanio 838, we’d be looking at a pretty beasty chip.

For reference, the Kompanio 838 hits a single core score just over 1000 and a multi-core score of 2300 or so. Pushing those up to 2000 and 4500 respectively would be a performance bump that could have some serious ramifications. I have a gut feeling we’ll see at least one more tablet emerge from either the MT8189 or MT8196, and if the MT8189 can get this sort of bump over the MT8188, we may be looking at a fantastic balance of power and battery life.

For now, however, I’m simply excited by the fact that we’re actually seeing some movement. I found ‘Skywalker’ in July, and it sat basically dormant for months. With so little action around it, I was getting nervous that it would be totally sidelined. Thankfully, in mid-December that changed, and it looks like we’re really picking up momentum with ‘Skywalker’ as we head into 2025.

Clearly much work needs to be done for this one, but its encouraging to know that we now have two potentially fast ARM-powered Chromebook development boards that we hope to see multiple devices spawn from over the course of 2025. Both the MT8189 and MT8196 have the potential to really shake up the Chromebook space, and I can’t wait until we get closer to seeing exactly what these devices become.