Make it 8: two more MediaTek MT8189 Chromebooks emerge to join the ‘Skywalker’ family

With ARM-powered Chromebooks, we’ve become pretty accustomed to only a couple devices spawning from any given baseboard; but ‘Skywalker’ (the baseboard for the mysterious MediaTek MT8189) has already bucked this trend with 6 total development boards spawning from it over the past few months.

And they’re not done yet. Digging through the Chromium Gerrit this morning, I’ve now uncovered evidence of two more boards joining the ‘Skywalker’ family: ‘Tarkin’ and ‘Phasma’, bringing the total number of MT8189-powered devices up to a whopping 8 at this point!

For those keeping the Star Wars theme score at home, Grand Moff Tarkin and Captain Phasma are two more fantastic additions to the roster that already includes ‘Obiwan’, ‘Luuke’, ‘Yoda’, ‘Anakin’, ‘Quigon’, and ‘Baze’.

I cannot overstate how unusual and exciting this is. With most MediaTek baseboards in the past, we’ve been lucky to see one or two variant devices make it to market. Seeing a family this large is a clear and undeniable signal of massive manufacturer interest and deep investment from Google and MediaTek in the MT8189 SoC.

Why this is such a big deal for Chromebooks

The sheer volume of devices in the pipeline is the best news we could ask for. It practically guarantees that when these Chromebooks begin to launch, we will see a wide and diverse range of options powered by this new ARM chip. This many boards in development means we can likely expect different form factors—clamshells, convertibles, and tablets—from multiple different manufacturers. And it should lead to more choices, more innovation, and a stronger-than-ever ARM-based offering for ChromeOS.

While we’re still waiting on the exact specifications for the still-unnamed MediaTek MT8189, our hope remains that it will deliver a compelling balance of performance and efficiency, likely as a notable step up from the already-capable Kompanio 838.

The ‘Skywalker’ family is officially the most prolific ARM-based Chromebook development platform we’ve ever seen, and we’ll be tracking all eight (and maybe more) of these new devices with great interest. As always, stay tuned.