14 DAY TRIAL // Most Chromebooks available on the market these days run on Intel chips, but there are some atypical models like the HP Chromebook 11 which runs on a Samsung Exynos chip.
The rumor mill also has it that Acer will soon be launching a new Chromebook equipped with the NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor, but we are yet to see this model arrive into the wild.
Also, some of you might recall, back at Computex 2014, low-cost Chinese marker Rockchip has teased a Chromebook prototype equipped with the RK3288 processor. And now, recent information reveals MediaTek might be headed down the Chrome OS path as well.
So at some point, we might get to see MediaTek architecture be implemented in Chrome notebooks, desktops and even tablets.
Google’s François Beaufort disclosed MediaTek developers have delivered code for an experimental board with an ARM Cortex-A7 processor at its center dubbed "Moose" to the open source Chromium OS project.
You can currently pick up a Chromebook for a meager $200 / €147, but if this price seems too much for you, just wait and see the MediaTek Chromebooks arrive into the wild. The architecture outlined above is now in use in low-cost smartphones and tablets, but they offer sluggish, unimpressive performance.
The HP Chromebook 11 and Samsung Series 3 Chromebooks run on an ARM Cortex-A15 dual-core processor, so they are bound to be faster than the ARM Cortex-A7 platform. However, they are still no match for most Intel Chips.
MediaTek might be looking to take Chromebooks down below, but what of the opposite end of the spectrum? As we already told you a few days ago, Acer holds dominion in this respect, as the device marker has just launched a Chromebook running on an Intel Core i3 Haswell processor.
Even with a less than average performance, a Cortex-A7 chip Chromebook might prove to be more than appealing to customers on a budget.
But how about a tablet running on the platform? Back in April, rumors proclaiming the advent of the first Chrome OS tablet surfaced online, after being silent for some time.
What if MediaTek could be the first to provide support to such a device? Imagine a Chome OS tablet selling below $200 / €147 and 3G/4G functionality incorporated. It doesn't sound half bad.
At this point, this is just speculation and at the moment, it’s not exactly clear weather we’re actually going to see Chrome OS devices with MediaTek processors in the wild, ever.