Google to discontinue Chrome support for certain old PCs

*Chrome will no longer attempt to install on devices that do not meet new minimum CPU requirements

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

Google’s Chromium development team has announced that Chrome will no longer be supported on some older PCs powered by pre-SSE3 Intel Atom or Celeron M processors.

It was learnt Google in a note stated the number of users affected by the change is likely to be small because it will only affect Windows and Linux users running Chrome on very old systems.

Impacted devices will be about 15 years old at this point, TechRadar noted.

According to the global search engine, “Our analysis… indicates that there is a very small number of Windows devices running Chrome with x86 processors that do not support SSE3.”

By implication, electronic devices that do not meet the new minimum CPU requirements will no longer attempt to install Chrome, and running Chrome itself will result in a crash.

Users with affected PCs will soon start receiving warnings, saying support for the browser will be ending soon, it noted.

The company further explained: “Until we require SSE3, Chrome will warn impacted users (with x86 CPUs that don’t support SSE3) that their computers will soon be unsupported.

“The implementation will use the framework in //chrome/browser/obsolete_system. This will result in a dismissable warning bar, and a permanent warning in the chrome://settings/help page.”

Though Google did not give specific reasons for dropping support for the browser, the likely reason is that so few devices are still running SSE2, report said.

Upgrading from one of these older processors should result in better performance.

Users who will be impacted by the upcoming change can either switch to a new browser or upgrade their device in order to keep using Chrome.