reported that phonics, Patch notes for open-source project Coreboot have confirmed that AMD’s mysterious Sabrina project (which will power Chromebooks) is just an alias for AMD’s recently announced Zen 2 Mendocino SoC. These new chips are already confirmed to be in mainstream Windows laptops and Google Chromebooks by the fourth quarter of this year.
These chips will give Chromebooks access to new and enhanced Zen 2 cores shrunk down to 6nm, RDNA2 integrated graphics, and LPDDR5 memory.
For the uninitiated, this story started back in February when a new Google mainboard known as Skyrim appeared to feature a mysterious new AMD SoC codenamed Sabrina. According to Pholonics. Unfortunately, not much was known about this new processor lineup, the only exception being the similarities in LPDDR5 support and Coreboot support code between Sabrina and AMD’s Cezanne Ryzen 5000 APUs.
However, thanks to Coreboot’s latest patch notes, we now know that Sabrina is just an alias for the Mendocino project. AMD already mentioned it at her Computex earlier this year. The Mendocino is a derivative of AMD’s more powerful Rembrandt Ryzen 6000 mobile processors, featuring the same RDNA2 graphics architecture and 6nm node as those chips, but downgrading the CPU architecture from Zen 3+ to Zen 2. (similar to the Van Gough APU on the Steam Deck). .
As a result of architectural changes, these chips will be aimed at mainstream notebooks and Chromebooks rather than the mid-range and high-end mobile markets, with a maximum configuration of 4 cores and 8 threads. These chips prioritize good video performance and long battery life over raw CPU horsepower. For example, one of AMD’s official Mendocino slides advertised 10 hours of “mixed use” battery life on the Lenovo Ideapad 1.
Mendocino will arrive anytime in the Q4 launch window for both Windows and ChromeOS devices.
We don’t know why AMD went to such trouble to alias the new Zen 2 parts, but at least we know the truth now.
