We now have 10 upcoming ‘Skywalker’ Chromebooks in the works with ‘Grogu’ and ‘Starros’

In what has become one of the more exciting, ongoing stories we’re tracking in the world of Chromebook development, the baseboard for the mysterious MediaTek MT8189, codenamed ‘Skywalker’, has completely shattered all precedents for the sheer volume of ARM-powered Chromebooks in development at one time. We were already shocked when the family grew to a massive eight unique devices.

But they’re still not done. Digging through the Chromium Gerrit this morning, we’ve now uncovered evidence of two more boards joining the ‘Skywalker’ family: ‘Grogu’ and ‘Starros’.

The ‘Skywalker’ family is now 10 devices strong

That’s right, the total count of devices in development based on this single MediaTek MT8189 baseboard is now a whopping 10. For those keeping score at home, that means the new additions of ‘Grogu’ (a.k.a. Baby Yoda) and ‘Starros’ (a pretty obscure Star Wars character) join the already-massive roster of ‘Obiwan’, ‘Luuke’, ‘Yoda’, ‘Anakin’, ‘Quigon’, ‘Baze’, ‘Tarkin’, and ‘Phasma’.

I cannot overstate how unusual 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 a big deal for Chromebooks

The sheer volume of devices in the pipeline 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 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. If nothing else, perhaps a revamped NPU alongside an overclocked version of the already-great MediaTek Kompanio 838 would be great in this army of what I’d guess will be fanless, lower-cost devices. I’d say this is probably the last one of these posts we’ll be putting out for ‘Skywalker’, but I’m not totally sure we’re done just yet. We’ll be keeping an eye on all of them for sure.