Alexandros Frantzis
December 24, 2025
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In our previous post we outlined how Collabora and MediaTek are closing long‑standing gaps in Chromium’s V4L2 support, enabling efficient hardware video decoding and encoding across the Genio and Kompanio SoC families.
That work is the result of a close, ongoing collaboration: MediaTek is sponsoring this effort and actively enabling Collabora to work directly on Chromium for their platforms and customers. This partnership gives us access to the latest hardware and reference platforms, while ensuring the improvements we contribute upstream are aligned with real product requirements.
In this follow‑up, we dive into the details of that joint work: how we tested Chromium on Genio 700 and Genio 720, what workloads we focused on, and what the numbers look like when MediaTek’s hardware codecs are driven by Chromium’s V4L2 paths. We’ll also highlight current limitations and where we, together with MediaTek, are headed next.
All the results below are derived from our 2025 validation work on Chromium 138 with Collabora’s patches running on MediaTek Genio 700 and Genio 720 evaluation boards.
MediaTek’s Genio and Kompanio platforms are shipped in many commercial products today, and most of them can run on upstream kernels with a modern, open graphics stack. By sponsoring this work, MediaTek is enabling Collabora to extend that upstream‑friendly approach into the Chromium ecosystem itself:
This tight loop—hardware vendor, open‑source integrator, upstream communities—is what makes it possible to offer both a strong out‑of‑the‑box experience and long‑term maintainability for Chromium-based products.
Our joint goal with MediaTek was to validate Chromium in configurations that are representative of the systems their partners ship today: upstream-capable kernels, modern graphics stacks, and both Yocto- and Debian-based userspace.
These evaluation kits, provided as part of the collaboration, serve as our reference platforms for Chromium bring‑up and validation, and mirror what MediaTek’s customers see in their own development environments.
For Genio 700 we tested three main combinations:
For Genio 720 we focused on:
In all cases we used a Chromium build based on:
To properly characterize CPU utilization we temporarily disabled background services that could skew results (for example, stopping sysrepo-cfg before running sar), and we configured audio routing via PipeWire/WirePlumber (wpctl status / wpctl set-default <id>).
This shared test infrastructure gives MediaTek and their customers a concrete baseline: the same Chromium build, the same test plan, and the same reference performance numbers.
The test plan was designed together with MediaTek to cover the most common Chromium-based use cases they see in customer projects:
sha256sum)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXb3EKWsInQ)
vp09) is used, not AV1 (av01), to exercise hardware decodinghttps://www.bbc.com/news)
nasa_2160p_60fps_hevc.mp4)gum_test):
These are not synthetic lab‑only workloads: they reflect exactly the kinds of usage patterns MediaTek and Collabora see in embedded Chromium deployments (IVI systems, digital signage, smart home hubs, etc.).
sar:
When enabling V4L2 acceleration, the most important question for MediaTek and their customers is: are we really on the hardware paths, or did we silently fall back to software? We use two main mechanisms to confirm this.
Ctrl+Shift+I → More Tools → Web Developer Tools).For decoding, we run Chromium with verbose logging for V4L2 components:
chromium --enable-logging=stderr --v=0 --vmodule="*v4l2*=2"
This produces traces showing:
MM21 at 3840×2176For encoding, we use:
chromium --enable-logging=stderr --v=0 --vmodule="*v4l2_video_encode*"=2
Here we validate that:
PIXEL_FORMAT_I420 to PIXEL_FORMAT_NV12 via a LibYUV-based image processor)These techniques are now part of the shared debugging toolbox that Collabora uses internally and that MediaTek’s customers can adopt when validating their own devices.
On Genio 700, MediaTek’s sponsorship allowed us to validate Chromium across three different graphics and userspace configurations: Scarthgap + Mali DDK, Scarthgap + Panfrost, and Debian 13 + Panfrost. This gives MediaTek and their partners a clear matrix of what works today and where upstream work is still required.
High-level outcomes for everyday workloads:
From a hardware selection perspective, Collabora believes this provides a clear picture: the MediaTek Genio 700 hardware is capable of efficient hardware decode/encode, and together we are steadily bringing the open graphics and distribution ecosystem up to that bar.
On Genio 700, playing back 4K VP9 content (YouTube, fullscreen) shows a clear win for hardware decoding:
For MediaTek’s customers, this difference directly translates into:
Representative WebCodecs decode performance on Genio 700:
These numbers are useful for both MediaTek’s internal teams and downstream product developers: they quantify the gain from enabling the hardware codecs correctly in Chromium.
For single‑stream encode/decode at 1080p:
For multi‑stream scenarios (2× encode + 2× decode), simulating a multi‑participant video call:
These results demonstrate that MediaTek’s hardware video engines, when driven via our joint Chromium work, can comfortably handle video conferencing workloads that would otherwise saturate the CPU.
The WebGL Aquarium test (5000 fish, fullscreen) on Genio 700 shows:
This reassures MediaTek’s ecosystem that both proprietary and open GPU stacks are viable for Chromium-based 3D content on Genio 700, with Panfrost catching up rapidly.
On Genio 720, MediaTek and Collabora focused on the Scarthgap + Mali DDK configuration and ran the full test suite, including stress workloads. Genio 720 gives us a view of how the next generation of hardware behaves under the same Chromium workloads.
These stability issues are being investigated jointly by Collabora and MediaTek, spanning kernel, GPU, and browser layers, to ensure that future platform and software revisions remove these edge‑case regressions.
On Genio 720, the same YouTube 4K VP9 scenario yields:
This locks in the main story for MediaTek’s partners: using the hardware decode path is not an optimization detail; it fundamentally changes the system’s performance envelope.
Representative numbers for WebCodecs decode (Scarthgap + Mali DDK):
As with Genio 700, these results provide concrete guidance for MediaTek’s product and application teams when choosing codecs and resolutions.
For a single encode/decode stream at 1080p:
For the 2× encode + 2× decode scenario:
This confirms that Genio 720’s hardware, combined with our Chromium integration work, can sustain multi‑stream conferencing workloads with plenty of CPU headroom for UI and application logic.
At 5000 fish in the WebGL Aquarium:
Again, Chromium’s WebGL support on Genio 720 is more than adequate for the 3D elements found in today’s Chromium-based UIs.
The test campaigns identified a number of areas where Collabora and MediaTek are actively collaborating on further improvements:
MediaTek’s sponsorship ensures Collabora can dedicate engineering time not just to quick downstream fixes, but to getting the relevant pieces into mainline kernels, Mesa, and upstream Chromium, so that all their customers—and the wider community—benefit.
From a product perspective, the Collabora–MediaTek collaboration on Chromium demonstrates that:
Crucially, because MediaTek is sponsoring this work with the explicit intent of supporting their customers, these improvements are not limited to a single one-time browser build: they are steadily landing upstream and in reference BSPs that downstream device makers can build on.
Looking ahead to 2026, this collaboration between MediaTek and Collabora will continue to deepen. Both companies are committed to further investing in Chromium acceleration and integration on Genio SoCs, expanding coverage across more codecs, use cases, and web technologies.
Our joint roadmap includes hardening hardware-accelerated media paths, targeting zero copy whenever possible, for even more demanding workloads, improving stability in complex WebRTC scenarios, and aligning closely with upstream Chromium, Mesa, and Linux kernel developments. This ongoing work ensures that Genio-based products can rely on a modern, efficient, and well‑maintained Chromium.
Bringing a Chromium‑based UI product to market requires careful considerations. Please consider getting in touch if you’re building a Chromium‑based UI or video application on MediaTek platforms and want to:
As part of this joint effort with MediaTek, Collabora maintains reference Debian and Yocto system images for MediaTek Genio EVKs that integrate this Chromium work for testing purposes. If you would like to evaluate a Debian or Yocto image on a MediaTek Genio evaluation kit (EVK), or discuss adapting this work to your own board or product, please contact Collabora. We’ll be happy to discuss your use case and share suitable images and guidance.
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