Intel's Cannonlake may be coming to Chromebooks
Intel’s Cannonlake CPUs are still a little ways off, but excitement is growing around the new 10 nm process used to manufacture the silicon. Intel has hinted that this chip is targeted specifically at mobile devices, but Cannonlake may be finding a new home in another device line: Chromebooks.
A recently discovered commit in the Chromium Gerrit repositories features a new board, codenamed “Zoombini.” In the description of the commit, there is mention of a chipset being developed for Cannonlake. While this isn’t a whole lot to go on, it does appear that someone out there is trying to build a Chrome OS device with a Cannonlake chip inside. Cannonlake itself isn’t set to debut until next year, but Intel has promised that the new chips will offer performance that’s a generation ahead of its rivals’ CPUs.
We’ve already seen chips based on a 10 nm FinFET process, namely the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and Samsung’s Exynos 8895. These chips are currently available in Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S8 and other premium phones and have shown to bring significant performance boosts and power efficiency. If Cannonlake makes it into Chromebooks (which are already lightweight and power-efficient as is), we may seem some incredible battery life alongside a bump in power.
We’ll have to wait until an official announcement is made, but the future for low-cost mobile devices, like Chromebooks, is looking pretty good.
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