Chrome OS systems are meant to be lightweight systems that don’t aim at the home desktop, but make suitable parallel systems. MediaTek and Rockchip are two of the most popular chipset makers from China, and according to reports, both could soon be powering Chrome OS devices.
Chrome OS originally started with affordable laptops, and has since then moved on to very portable ‘chromeboxes’. This is quite a bit similar to the Android TV box concept that Chinese makers have embraced, but with a completely different operating system. Chromebooks from well-known makers such as Acer go for as little as $200; with a MediaTek involvement, these could well sell for quite a bit lesser than that.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR4qVB3_cnc]
In the video above, Charbax of ARMdevices.net can be seen demoing an RK3288 powered Chromium OS (open source version of the Chrome OS) system.
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Most of today’s Chrome OS devices ship with x86 powered Intel processors, but the Chrome OS is known to run flawlessly on ARM chips, HP Chromebook 11 being a prime example. Whether or not MediaTek and Rockchip systems prove to be as fast is yet to be seen, but both makers are said to be keen on having a line of Chrome OS systems so it would be safe to assume there will be quite a bit of development (and hopefully community support) for these.