MediaTek’s latest Chromebook chip brings better battery life and AI

Ben Schoon | Jun 3 2024 - 1:29 pm PT

Amid Computex this week, MediaTek has unveiled a new chipset for Chromebooks, with the Kompanio 838 promising better battery life and AI.

The latest in its “Kompanio” line, MediaTek Kompanio 838 is an octa-core chip for Chromebooks which MediaTek claims brings “all-day” battery life thanks to its efficient 6nm process. That’s upgraded over the 7nm process used in MediaTek’s 2022-released chips, but still a fair bit behind the “bleeding edge.”

The new chip, MediaTek says, also supports output to two 4K displays at once and features 4 TOPS of performance for AI tasks through a dedicated NPU. As Google makes AI a more core part of the ChromeOS experience, that’s a welcome upgrade.

MediaTek explains:

The octa-core Kompanio 838 packs outstanding performance and multitasking capabilities into a highly efficient SoC that enables all-day battery life for thin and light Chromebooks. This new chipset supports DDR4 and LPDDR4X to meet a wider range of OEM requirements, and doubles memory bandwidth compared to previous generations to provide considerably more data throughput.

To support the latest AI enhancements, Kompanio 838 enables a dedicated AI processor, the MediaTek NPU 650, to offer more interactive and higher quality multimedia with unparalleled power efficiency. MediaTek NPUs are designed for efficient image data processing, capable of quickly executing complex computations.

Another key highlight of this chip is built-in support for AV1 video decoding, a helpful addition as more of the web starts using this standard. The chip also features support for Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, as well as an upgraded ISP for better camera support.

MediaTek Kompanio 838 will appear in upcoming Lenovo Chromebooks.