NVIDIA Tegra X1 Chromebooks Appear Closer, Support Added To Coreboot

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Tegra X1 Chromebooks Appear Closer, Support Added To Coreboot

Google engineers have added support for the Tegra X1 "T210" SoC to Coreboot. Additionally, they've added support for the "Smaug" Chromebook to Coreboot that uses this latest-generation NVIDIA Tegra 64-bit SoC...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Tegra-X1-Coreboot

[schmidtbag]

I'm considering getting a chromebook myself (that I intend to put linux on), and even considered some of the K1 models. I like the tegra series due to their linux-friendliness but they do tend to be a bit more expensive, and I'm not really interested in the sheer GPU power. I get the impression the Tegra series is of the least power efficient, and I just don't think sacrificing battery life for GPU power is worth it to me personally. I'll still be interested to hear more about this though.

[johnc]

One of the downsides of the ARM-based Chromebooks is that it's sometimes not so easy getting Ubuntu to run on them. I might wait to see what their next chip looks like since it should be on 14nm by then.

[pipe13]

Ubuntu 14.04 runs grate on Jetson TK1 A15 dev board. Probably the only thing that do, but it does. If Nvidia floats an X1 dev board, it won't be long for someone to hack its Ubuntu onto Chromebook.

[schmidtbag]

One of the downsides of the ARM-based Chromebooks is that it's sometimes not so easy getting Ubuntu to run on them. I might wait to see what their next chip looks like since it should be on 14nm by then.

I personally don't care about Ubuntu. I haven't used it on one of my PCs since 2009. Based on what I know, brands like Nvidia and Freescale are pretty good with linux, brands like Samsung and Texas Instruments are "just ok", and brands like Rockchip and Allwinner are awful. The chromebook I'm thinking of getting uses the Exynos 5 octa core. I don't really care about having 8 cores, but as far as I'm aware, linux works with all the hardware it has (including the A7 cores and GPU) and it's a decent price for what it offers. I wish it had 2D or GLAMOR acceleration, but I might be able to get by without that.

[deppman]

I'm considering getting a chromebook myself (that I intend to put linux on), and even considered some of the K1 models. I like the tegra series due to their linux-friendliness but they do tend to be a bit more expensive, and I'm not really interested in the sheer GPU power. I get the impression the Tegra series is of the least power efficient, and I just don't think sacrificing battery life for GPU power is worth it to me personally. I'll still be interested to hear more about this though.

I own the Acer 13 with the 32GB SSD and the 1080p screen. Acer claims, and I can confirm, that it gets 11.5hrs of battery life. Acer says the 768p model gets 14hrs of battery life. So its pretty darn efficient considering it is competitive in CPU perf and 2-4x the GPU perf vs. Intel SoCs. Performance and efficiency on the x1 should quite a bit better too.

[schmidtbag]

I own the Acer 13 with the 32GB SSD and the 1080p screen. Acer claims, and I can confirm, that it gets 11.5hrs of battery life. Acer says the 768p model gets 14hrs of battery life. So its pretty darn efficient considering it is competitive in CPU perf and 2-4x the GPU perf vs. Intel SoCs. Performance and efficiency on the x1 should quite a bit better too.

I looked at the Acer model, but I try to steer clear of them lately. In terms of Acer PCs I, my family, or friends have owned (which collectively was about 10), all of them have had some sort of hardware problem even if brand new. Seeing as chromebooks are of the cheapest laptops you can get, I can't imagine what else Acer has done to lower costs. But regardless, that is a pretty decent battery life. I just wish there were more Tegra options. HP makes a Tegra chromebooks too but they're bigger than what I'm looking for.

[Passso]

This looks really a nice hardware, both CPU and GPU are good, excellent battery life etc.

What is stopping me is that I cannot play any "real" game on an ARM arch... so the GPU is unfortunately useless.

[coder111]

Ok, so do I still need NVidia BLOB gpu drivers for Tegra? If that's the case, I'm definitely not getting one.

There were rumors that NVidia are developing open-source Tegra drivers or contrubuting to Noveau? How did that end? Are they still doing it? Does Noveau run OK on this? What are the performance figures compared to BLOB?

Does Debian run out of the box?

[wizard69]

The only way I'd be interested in a K1 Chromebook is if it easily supports a Linux disto like Fedora and has respectable performance running that disto. From what I've seen so far the lack of CPU performance is a real negative with ARM based PC's, the hope is K1 would be good enough. I'm not a fan of big.LITTLE either.

Oh one more thing these machines almost universally need more flash.