In addition to reports about Google's in-house Chromebook Pixel, another interesting hint about a new Chrome OS device actually appeared in the Chromium code base on Thursday. It's code-named "puppy" and may sport Nvidia's just-announced Tegra 4 SoC. Is "puppy" and "pixel" the same device? It's possible but unknown at this point.
Chrome Story originally found the "puppy" reference housed in Google's Chromium code base, reading: puppy: Add bct ebuild; This includes cfg files for generating a bct that works with T114 dalmore. Searching for the T114 Dalmore reference led the site to an article published by Phoronix. It said that Nvidia released Linux kernel patches back on December 20, 2012, supporting the Tegra 4 SoC under Linux.
According to the report, the patches referred to the Tegra 4 as "Tegra 114", and the development/evaluation boards are called "Dalmore" and "Pluto" for the Cortex-A15 MP platform. Thus the Tegra support in Linux allows for a single kernel image to handle Dalmore T114, Pluto T114, and Cardhu T30 (Tegra 3 reference board).
Nvidia's Tegra 4 features four ARM Cortex-A15 processor cores and 72 GeForce graphics cores. It also includes a 4G LTE modem and a new camera functionality. That said, Nvidia's Tegra 4 may be what's powering the rumored ChromeBook Pixel laptop which sports a full touchscreen display with a 2560 x 1700 resolution. It definitely makes sense.
Chrome Story also points out an interesting line in the Chromium code that seemingly backs another rumor that Chrome OS and Android may soon be merging. The line in question reads: CROS_WORKON_SUBDIR="android-files". Does this mean Chrome OS will have access to Android apps? It's possible that the eventual "merge" will give users the option of installing HTML5-based apps and full-blown, locally-installed apps like 1.5 GB+ games (NOVA 3, Bard's Tale, etc.).
At this point, "puppy" could be a laptop, desktop or a set-top box. But right now it's all speculation until Google shows us the real goods this June at Google I/O.
