AMD's "Sabrina" SoC Is Mendocino - Coreboot Enablement Continues

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD's "Sabrina" SoC Is Mendocino - Coreboot Enablement Continues

You may recall the Phoronix news earlier this year around an AMD "Sabrina" SoC appearing in Coreboot for open-source system firmware support. Over the past few months we've cited a number of AMD Sabrina hits in open-source code but outside of that haven't heard much else about "Sabrina" or seen it on AMD's roadmaps...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Sabrina-Mendocino

[Paradigm Shifter]

Given that Skyrim is a trademark, I'm curious whether ZeniMax will defend it by suing Google (because as far as I understand it, to maintain a trademark it must be defended if used without permission or incorrectly?) or whether they'll just quietly ignore it. Because Google is big and powerful, and stuff.

[stormcrow]

Given that Skyrim is a trademark, I'm curious whether ZeniMax will defend it by suing Google (because as far as I understand it, to maintain a trademark it must be defended if used without permission or incorrectly?) or whether they'll just quietly ignore it. Because Google is big and powerful, and stuff.

1) ZeniMax is a giant in it's own rights. It's also now a subsidiary of Microsoft, part of its gaming division.
2) That's a misconception about trademarks. It's up to the holder when and if to defend it in any given case. Trademarks are very market specific which is why the Beetles backed off when Jobs & Wozniac registered "Apple" as a computer hardware company when the Beetles already had a trademark for "Apple" for a music production brand. They weren't (at the time) in the same business markets so Apple-the-music-company was almost inevitable to lose any lawsuit against Apple-the-computer-company over brands.
3) I must have missed the relevance here over trademarks since this article has practically nothing to do with Google, Skyrim, nor Zenimax aside from a Chromebook mention.

[Paradigm Shifter]

1) ZeniMax is a giant in it's own rights. It's also now a subsidiary of Microsoft, part of its gaming division.

Knew Zenimax were big, but forgot about the Microsoft acquisition.

2) That's a misconception about trademarks. It's up to the holder when and if to defend it in any given case.

Seems like my understanding is correct, then: to the decision to defend it is at the discretion of the holder.

Trademarks are very market specific which is why the Beetles backed off when Jobs & Wozniac registered "Apple" as a computer hardware company when the Beetles already had a trademark for "Apple" for a music production brand. They weren't (at the time) in the same business markets so Apple-the-music-company was almost inevitable to lose any lawsuit against Apple-the-computer-company over brands.

Beatles.

And it's also not entirely correct, if the decades of legal wrangling are any indication. The fact that Apple Computer settled out of court that first time does not imply that they would have either won or lost if it had continued, but it certainly would have destroyed them financially at that stage.

3) I must have missed the relevance here over trademarks since this article has practically nothing to do with Google, Skyrim, nor Zenimax aside from a Chromebook mention.

It's the big black text in the first image. Codename or otherwise, it is an unauthorised use of a registered trademark. If it was Nintendo, I'm sure the legal paperwork would already be filed. image.php?id=2022&image=amd_sabrina_skyrim.webp

[nranger]

From the article,

AMD Mendocino will target $399~699 USD mainstream laptops and featuring 6nm TSMC Zen 2 cores with 4 cores / 8 threads, RDNA2 graphics, and LPDDR5 memory. Nice on the graphics side as well as exclusively using LPDDR5 system memory, but lagging behind on the CPU side with Zen 2 - understandable though given the low-end/low-cost space and ultra-portables like Chromebooks usually not engaging in too compute intensive work.

If you think the CPU is "lagging" for being only four Zen 2 cores, the GPU is pretty underwhelming too. Yes it uses RDNA2, but it's a whopping two, count'em two, Compute Units. That's 128 Stream Processors.

So Mendocino is basically the same CPU and a quarter of the GPU of a SteamDeck with only 2/3rds the power budget of a SteamDeck. Also I won't put it past ChromeBook and budget laptop makers to use the crappiest DDR5 they can find.

This chip and associated designs could potentially compete amazingly against Celeron powered Chromebooks and Netbooks. However after seeing the trajectory of Ryzen 3000 and 4000 powered budget laptops, Mendocino is basically a side-grade. The market landscape has changed considerably, and AMD seems to be taking every opportunity to shed their "budget" brand image,

[kylew77]

f it was Nintendo, I'm sure the legal paperwork would already be filed.

Don't be too sure. My Chromebook is a Dedede series Chromebook which is from Kirby which is a Nintendo product. My last was a Yuna which is a Final Fantasy character name.

[kylew77]

I thought Sabrina was supposed to be the 8c 16t Chromebook platform, did that project get canceled or are they still coming?

[timofonic]

Transgender or travestite?

[gsedej]

What is "Skyrim google motherboard"?

[rfl1911]

When I read "mendocino", flashback to 199x kicked hard ( https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us...mendocino.html )

And we called it "celeron medonho"