Qualcomm Reveals Snapdragon AR2 Processor for Glasses-sized AR Devices...
In contrast to the company's current Snapdragon XR2 chips, Qualcomm today unveiled Snapdragon AR2, its "purpose-built head-worn augmented reality platform." Qualcomm claims the AR2 architecture is better suited for developing AR glasses with low power consumption and compact form factors.
The Snapdragon AR2 platform, which comprises a trio of CPUs, was unveiled by Qualcomm today at the Snapdragon Summit event. The company claims that this platform would make it feasible to create AR devices that are genuinely the size of glasses.
Since entering the standalone VR market first, Qualcomm has dominated the market with its Snapdragon XR2 CPUs, which are currently present in more than 60 devices overall, including several of the top standalone headsets.
A new Snapdragon AR2 platform with a distributed processing design has been developed by Qualcomm in an effort to take a comparable slice out of the growing market for AR glasses. The platform consists of three chips:
- AR processor (for sensor perception and video output)
- AR co-processor (for sensor fusion and dedicated computer vision tasks)
- Wi-Fi 7 chip (for communication to a host processing device)
In comparison to the single-chip Snapdragon XR2 solution, Qualcomm claims AR2 is up to 50% more power efficient, offers 2.5 times higher AI performance, and has a more compact form factor thanks to a more evenly divided workload over a core CPU and a co-processor.
Along with assisting in workload sharing, Qualcomm expects AR2 devices to connect to a host device like a smartphone or wireless compute puck that will handle labor-intensive tasks like application processing and rendering. The Wi-Fi 7 chip (FastConnect 7800), according to Qualcomm, can reach 5.8 Gbps bandwidth with only 2ms of latency.
Qualcomm claims it will be possible to create small AR glasses that use less than one watt of power using their three-chip distributed computing system.
Up to nine cameras can be used simultaneously on the AR2 platform for a variety of head-tracking, environment-sensing, and user-tracking tasks.
“We built Snapdragon AR2 to address the unique challenges of head-worn AR and provide industry-leading processing, AI, and connectivity that can fit inside a stylish form factor,” said Hugo Swart, vice president of XR product management at Qualcomm. “With the technical and physical requirements for VR/MR and AR diverging, Snapdragon AR2 represents another metaverse-defining platform in our XR portfolio to help our OEM partners revolutionize AR glasses.”
There is currently no information available regarding the release date of the first AR2 devices, however, Qualcomm cites the following companies as active platform collaborators: Lenovo, LG, Niantic, Nreal, Oppo, Pico, Qonoq, Rokid, Sharp, TCL, Vuzix, and Xiaomi.
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