The powerful, new MediaTek MT8196 Chromebook has a name: ‘Rauru’

Last week, we uncovered work being done on yet another ARM-based MediaTek chip for Chromebooks in the still-mysterious MT8196. Based solely on the model number, this SoC should end up as the most powerful MediaTek chip in a Chromebook to date, and it could be a significant jump depending on the cores included. For now, I’m still searching for those details, but at least we now have a code name to attach to the development board for the new MT8196: ‘Rauru’.

It would seem development of the MT8196 has been going on all year right under our noses, simply disguised as the MT819x. Recently that change has been clarified, and ‘Rauru’ is now the board we’ll be keeping tabs on moving forward as we await whatever this device will become.

Now that we have the actual name of the development board for the MT8196, I’m hoping to find a lot more details surrounding this upcoming Chromebook line. My greatest hope is that we don’t see a one-and-done approach as we did with the MT8195 in the Acer Chromebook Spin 513. I’ve said it before and will continue to repeat the fact that the Spin 513 was fantastic is so many ways and such a disappointment to be pulled off of store shelves so quickly after its release.

The MT8196 should end up being even more powerful with more cores purposed just for AI as well, so the eventuality of this baseboard producing a few new Chromebook Plus models looks good. Again, we have work to do to find out what other Chromebooks could be on the way with this SoC inside, and that has historically been tough to do with MediaTek-powered devices.

Take ‘Ciri’ as an example: I’ve been tracking the MT8188 (now the Kompanio 838) in that device for over a year and a half, and I still only have one device to reference from it. While I doubt this will be a one-off board, I can only go on concrete evidence I find; and that evidence only points to one Kompanio 838 tablet at the moment in ‘Ciri’.

For both the MT8188 and MT8196, my hope is to see a handful of Chromebooks running on each as the transition to ARM-based machines is happening more than ever. With the big Windows laptop push to the Snapdragon X Elite and Apple having moved to ARM a few years back, it’s time for a bigger push in the Chromebook world, too. Clearly, MediaTek is a primary driver of that change, so I’m sitting with fingers crossed that we see more devices soon from both of these upcoming SoCs.