MediaTek unveils Kompanio 1380 chipset for high-end Chromebooks

At CES earlier this year, Acer revealed three new Chromebooks — the Chromebook Spin 513, the Chromebook 315, and the Chromebook 314. While the Chromebook 314 and Chromebook 315 were pretty standard entry-level Chromebooks featuring Intel Celeron and Pentium Silver processors, the Chromebook Spin 513 was a bit different. Instead of an Intel chip, it featured MediaTek’s unannounced Kompanio 1380 chip. At the time, Acer only revealed that the Kompanio 1380 packed an octa-core CPU and an ARM Mali-G57 MC5 GPU. Now, MediaTek has finally unveiled the chip and shared more details.

The all-new MediaTek Kompanio 1380 features an octa-core CPU with four ARM Cortex-A78 performance cores clocked at 3GHz and four ARM Cortex-A55 efficiency cores clocked at 2GHz. As mentioned earlier, the chipset also packs the ARM Mali-G57 GPU for graphics-intensive tasks, along with support for quad-channel 2,133MHz LPDDR4x memory. In addition, the chipset includes MediaTek’s APU 3.0 — a multi-core AI processor that will aid with AI camera and AI voice applications while also optimizing battery life.

The Kompanio 1380 offers support for up to two 4K displays at a 60Hz refresh rate or one 4K 60Hz display and two 4K 30Hz displays. It also features support for AV1 hardware decoding, and a dedicated audio digital signal processor (DSP) for ultra-low power voice on wakeup (VoW) capabilities. For connectivity, the chipset offers support for both Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E, along with Bluetooth 5.0. Talking about the new chipset, C Tseng, general manager of MediaTek’s Intelligent Multimedia Business Unit said, “Kompanio 1380 continues MediaTek’s legacy as the No. 1 chipmaker for Arm-based Chromebooks, elevating premium Chromebook experience with next-level performance and extra-long battery life.

This chip stands out with its outstanding processing performance, best-in-class multimedia and AI features, and smooth cloud gaming capabilities, all integrated into an ultra-efficient 6nm chip.”The MediaTek Kompanio 1380 will compete with similar ARM-based offerings from Qualcomm like the Snapdragon 7c found on the older Chromebook Spin 513. We can’t wait to get our hands on a Chromebook featuring the new MediaTek chip and put it through its paces. However, that might be a couple of months away, as the new Acer Chromebook Spin 513 with the Kompanio 1380 will go on sale in April this year, with more products to follow thereafter.