We now have a baseboard for the upcoming Snapdragon X Plus Chromebooks: ‘Bluey’

The excitement around Qualcomm’s potent Snapdragon X Plus chip potentially powering a new generation of high-performance ARM Chromebooks has been building for a bit, and we’re eagerly watching for any new concrete signs of development. After years of waiting for Qualcomm to bring a truly competitive SoC to the ChromeOS table, the news of Snapdragon X Plus Chromebooks is pretty exciting stuff; and today, we have a very tangible piece of that puzzle: we’re officially tracking the first baseboard for this project, codenamed ‘Bluey’.

For those unfamiliar, a “baseboard” in the Chromium Gerrit is a foundational piece of hardware development. It’s essentially a reference board upon which multiple different Chromebook models (often called ‘variants’ or ‘reference designs’) can be built by various manufacturers. Finding ‘Bluey’ means we’ve moved beyond just conceptual support for the Snapdragon X Plus in ChromeOS to actual, identifiable hardware taking shape. This makes the prospect of holding a Snapdragon X Plus-powered Chromebook in our hands feel a whole lot closer.

Why ‘Bluey’ has us in high anticipation

As we’ve discussed previously, the arrival of the Snapdragon X Plus in the Chromebook world is significant for a few key reasons:

• A Real Performance Contender: This isn’t one of Qualcomm’s older, phone-derived chips. The Snapdragon X Plus is designed for Windows-on-ARM laptops to compete with Intel’s Core U-series and even Apple’s M-series silicon in terms of performance and efficiency. Bringing that kind of power to ChromeOS could be a game-changer for demanding tasks and overall fluidity.
• Shaking Up the ARM Space: For a while, MediaTek has been the primary player in the higher-end ARM Chromebook market with their Kompanio chips. While they’ve made great strides, the Snapdragon X Plus has the potential to offer some serious competition, pushing both companies to innovate further.
• The Promise of “Plus”: While details are still emerging on what specific advantages the “Plus” variant of the Snapdragon X will bring to Chromebooks, we’re optimistic it will deliver a fantastic balance of power and battery life.

Hopefully the first of many

Discovering ‘Bluey’ is a fantastic start, and it gives us a specific development branch to keep our eyes on in the Chromium Gerrit. Our hope, of course, is that this is just the first of several Snapdragon X Plus baseboards to emerge. A healthy variety of boards usually translates to a wider range of devices from different OEMs, giving us more options when it comes time to buy.

We’ll be digging into the commits around ‘Bluey’ and will be sure to update you on any interesting developments, new variant boards that spin off from it, or any hints about which manufacturers might be building on this platform.