14 DAY TRIAL // Qualcomm announced today several new products to revolutionize the VR and AI market, as well as the broadcast audio community and PC industry.
The semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company introduces today a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine designed to power the AI capabilities on select Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile platform, suggesting upcoming smart devices could be smarter and more eco-friendly.
This includes smartphones from OnePlus, Motorola, Xiaomi, ASUS, Vivo, OPPO, ZTE, Nubia, Blackshark, and Smartisan, all powered by Google's Android mobile operating system running on top of the Linux kernel. Manufactures will be able to use Qualcomm's AI engine to accelerate AI apps on their devices.
"On-device AI demands multiple hardware architectures, software tools, and frameworks to meet developer demand and performance thresholds for the myriad of AI-powered features and apps arriving on smartphones this year," said Gary Brotman, director of product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
Qualcomm's new AI platform promises to support the Android Neural Networks API, let developers run AI algorithms straight on the Hexagon Vector Processor with the Hexagon Neural Network (NN) library, and incorporates the Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine (NPE) software framework.
New Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR Reference Design, Always Connected PCs
Qualcomm also announced today new Virtual Reality (VR) reference platform based on its powerful Snapdragon 845 chip, which will be used in flagship smartphones like Samsung's soon-to-be-released Galaxy S9 series. With this, the company hopes to fuel next-generation VR experiences on mobile devices.
Qualcomm says that the Qualcomm Broadcast Audio will be available on a wide range of Qualcomm Bluetooth Audio SoCs like CSRA68100, CSR8670, CSR8675, as well as the recently announced QCC5100, which are used for wireless various hearables and earbuds.
In addition, Qualcomm introduces Qualcomm Broadcast Audio in an attempt to help users stream music to various Bluetooth headphones and speakers at the same time, and a partnership with Microsoft to deliver always-connected Windows 10 PCs powered by the Snapdragon Mobile PC platform to consumers.