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We have finally started to see momentum building in the Skylake Chromebook department and hopefully more ARM devices will be following close behind. As we prepare for the holiday season and the pending release of more than just a handful of new Chromebooks, we are now getting our first glimpses of the first Kaby Lake Chromebook.
Added only yesterday, ‘Eve’ is the first device utilizing Intel’s 7th generation Core Kaby Lake chipset. The details are very, very few but it appears much of the basics are being pulled from the Skylake board, ‘Glados’. As noted during the release of the newest processor, Kaby Lake shares a very similar architecture with its Skylake predecessor.
Below is the addition of the ‘Eve’ overlay to the repository. You will see the inheriting of “chipset-kbl” which represents Kaby Lake.
We can also see in the board.c file a reference to tablet mode interruption of the keyboard and trackpad. This doesn’t guarantee a convertible device but it does mean the support is there.
I will be keeping an ever watchful eye on this device and updating as soon as new information is available. This very well could be the first 7th generation Intel Chromebook. It is also possible that this is only a prototype. Being that Kaby Lake has yet to be implemented into a Chrome device, ‘Eve’ might well be a test subject or a baseboard for future devices.
Either way it’s exciting to see Intel’s newest chipset coming to Chrome OS.
