MediaTek has released chips to power Android phones for years and broken into the laptop PC space in recent times too. Now, it's got a new chip aimed at another market -- Chromebooks -- to empower those affordable machines to connect to the latest generative artificial intelligence agents.
Previous MediaTek chips in the Kompanio line powered Chromebooks like the Lenovo Duet 11. Its new silicon, the Kompanio Ultra, brings faster speeds and better generative AI performance to affordable ChromeOS-powered laptops. In the arms race to empower portable PCs with artificial intelligence, MediaTek's chip aims to make cheaper machines capable of handling cutting-edge "AI agents" that use generative AI to anticipate user needs.
"We worked closely with Google to ensure the newest Chromebook Plus devices enjoy next-generation on-device AI capabilities, superior performance per watt and immersive multimedia," said Adam King, MediaTek VP and GM of computing and multimedia.
In a briefing, MediaTek boasted benchmarks that pitted its new Kompanio Ultra chip against the Intel Core Ultra 5 125U chip (which powers laptops like the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 Gen 4), saying its Chromebook silicon performs better in devices to get over 4 hours longer battery life and up to 40% faster GPU performance in the GFXBench Manhattan benchmark. The Kompanio Ultra's NPU is capable of up to 50 trillion operations per second (a metric of AI performance), which is nearly five times greater than the 11 TOPS of the Intel Core Ultra 5 125U, MediaTek said.
The Kompanio Ultra inherits a lot of DNA from MediaTek's latest mobile chip, the Dimensity 9400, which was introduced last fall as part of the company's big push to enable AI agents in phones. But the Kompanio's different software and drivers specialize it for Chromebooks, even if its higher performance capabilities put it more in line with Google's Chromebook Plus requirements for ChromeOS laptops empowered by the search giant's Gemini AI.