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.

Patrick Georgi of Google's Chromium team added the Tegra "T210" a.k.a. Tegra X1 support to Coreboot. All of this new SoC enablement landed a short time ago with this Git commit.

The Tegra X1 hardware enablement was followed by the adding Smaug to Coreboot. Smaug is the codename for a Chrome OS device using the Tegra X1 but unfortunately details beyond that seem scarce.

So far only the Shield Android TV and Shield Portable use the Tegra X1, but damn, I can't wait for a Chromebook using the X1. The Tegra X1 packs in an ARMv8 64-bit Cortex-A57 + Cortex-A53 quad-core package in a big.LITTLE design while boasting NVIDIA Maxwell graphics. I also can't wait for a Tegra X1 development board similar to the Jetson TK1; I was told last month such a board like that might come in H2.