Quote from Reddit post:
I spotted this change in the Steam Deck kernel by a Valve employee that is testing HDMI CEC for a new device. Interestingly, it appears to share at least some hardware similarity to Google ChromeOS devices (only because the change is in the ChromeOS Embedded Controller driver).
The device appears to be being developed on a platform codenamed the “AMD Lilac.” Whether this is the SOC or refers a development board that Valve is developing with is unclear to me. On Geekbench there are references to the AMD Lilac, most of which use the AMD 8540U (it’s possible that this won’t be the final SoC of the device, as these are all likely prototype boards). There are a few earlier references in Geekbench with earlier SoCs.
Pure speculation: I’m guessing it’s a console, set top box, or something similar that is supposed to connect to a TV and not a handheld or VR headset, given that HDMI CEC seems to be an important feature. The inclusion of ChromeOS hardware is confusing.
Pure speculation on the updates to ChromeOS EC: This is the most surprising thing to me.
- Maybe the device could just be using the hardware and drivers for ChromeOS devices while still running just SteamOS, but I don’t see the point in Valve doing that.
- Maybe there’s some sort of collaboration with Google, as Valve is actually working with them to bring Steam to ChromeOS.
- I think it’s plausible (at least) that fremont will run a Steam client on top of ChromeOS instead of SteamOS.
- Diving into deeper speculation, this may allow Valve to run existing Android apps on the same device, specifically Android TV apps, which would make sense if this is something like an Nvidia Shield competitor. ChromeOS is just about the only OS that can officially run both Android TV apps and desktop Steam on the same OS.
- I find it likely that for a gaming and media-focused Steam box, Valve will want to have an existing ecosystem of media and streaming apps optimized for TV. If so, I think it’s a smart way to push into this market without needing to convince, say, all the streaming services to build apps for a new device.
The prototype board is much faster than Steam Deck:
Geekbench CPU result for Lilac (8540U): 2550 for single core and in the 9000s for multicore https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8301932
- Steam Deck is in the 1300-1400 range for single core and in the 4000s for multicore
Geekbench GPU result for Lilac (8540U): 66807 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/compute/2323659
- Steam Deck tends to be within the mid 10000s to mid 20000s
The greatly improved performance, to me, suggests a TV box, as the 8540U at handheld TDPs would score much more competitively with the Steam Deck.
Commit by a Valve employee 4 weeks ago adding code to test CEC for a new device \“fremont\”
Lilac is an AMD dev platform, it’s used to do early development before you have the real platform in hand to work with. It’s been spotted in the wild running 7700 HS, 8500 U and Zen3 embedded <55W SoCs - there’s no way to extrapolate new steam hardware performance info from this reliably.
It could be reference hardware for 3rd parties looking to make SteamOS devices. We at know that’s happening.
Yeah, that was my thinking too. Lilac is a generic enough platform that OEMs can do the bulk of their platform work with a lilac dev kit before they have real hardware in hand for the last 10%.
Valve hasn’t even announced their own steam machine yet have they? I’d be betting on ASUS to be first to market with whatever’s in the pipe from OEMs.
What’s weird is that this is using the deprecated embedded controller. Goolge themselves moved to a successor named Zephyr EC years ago: https://source.chromium.org/chromiumos/chromiumos/codesearch/+/main:src/platform/ec/docs/zephyr/README.md
Valve didn’t announce anything. They technically didn’t even announce Deadlock. I think whatever will be announced, we’ll see next month at CES any my personal opinion is that a new generation ROG Ally with a SteamOS option is at the forefront (no way Asus isn’t also making a Windows one but perhaps with less fanfare).