In the early morning of September 28, Qualcomm announced the official launch of the first generation of Snapdragon AR1 platform and the second generation of Snapdragon XR2 platform, the former is specifically built for the next generation of smart glasses products, while the latter is used to support the next generation of VR (virtual reality) and MR (mixed reality) devices.
Qualcomm's move focuses on the current strong development momentum of the VR and MR Industries. Hugo Swart, vice president and general manager of XR business at Qualcomm Technologies, believes that in this field, C-end applications such as games, fitness and entertainment continue to develop, and enterprise-level scenarios such as training, education and medical care also have good prospects.
He stressed to media such as Interface News that the goal of the second-generation Snapdragon XR2 platform is to really promote the popularity of VR and MR.
"Our strategy is different from Apple's [Vision Pro's R1 chip solution], which is more expensive and requires multiple chips and external battery support." Sihongguo said that this structure is difficult to make users afford the end price. The second-generation Snapdragon XR2 platform is a single-chip solution that does not require an external chipset and is more suitable for Oems to manufacture hardware products with high performance and low price threshold.
The new platform also supports 3K x 3K display, Sihongguo said that this is the current VR and MR Equipment the most ideal display program, the 4K program on the market although the display effect is better, but the price is too expensive, do not have the scale expansion of the supply capacity.
Qualcomm has also significantly upgraded the GPU for this purpose, supporting the latest technologies such as spatial distortion and visual focus rendering. Compared to the original product, the GPU performance of the new platform is improved by 2.5 times, and the power consumption is reduced by half for the same visual effect.
In the application of AI technology, the new platform supports INT8, optimizes the connection of different AI modules, and upgrades the computer vision module.
In view of the huge computing power consumption required for the six-degree-of-freedom (6DoF) head tracking that is always turned on on VR and MR Headset devices, the original XR2 platform uses a software solution to support it, and the second generation platform puts this function into the chip hardware Visual Analytics Engine (Engine for Visual Analytics), thereby improving performance. The power consumption and delay are reduced.
The second-generation Snapdragon XR2 platform also supports concurrent perception technology, which can accurately understand the user's environment (such as the location of the floor and wall, what items are in the room, etc.), and can also track the user's head, eye tracking, gesture and full-body movement tracking.
Sihongguo said that these new technologies need to consume a lot of computing power in the operation process, so the terminal side AI computing power of the new platform has increased by 8 times compared with the previous generation of products. Qualcomm has been in the XR space for more than a decade, launching several XR-specific platforms, including the first-generation Snapdragon AR2, Snapdragon XR2+, Snapdragon XR and Snapdragon XR1 platforms, and partnering with leading companies such as Meta, Lenovo and PICO to release more than 80 hardware devices.
VR/MR Devices typically support cooling requirements of 10-15 watts of power, so they have more powerful cooling capabilities than mobile phones, and they can be connected to gaming PCS, relying on better cooling capabilities and dedicated graphics cards to access games.
Therefore, the interconnection between XR devices and other smart devices is very important, and there is a greater need for new generation connectivity technologies such as Wi-Fi 7. The second-generation Snapdragon XR2 platform supports Wi-Fi 7 and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity with 25% lower power consumption and 80% lower latency. In terms of the video perspective delay for mixed reality MR Experiences, the new platform reduces this to 12ms.
Meta's (formerly Facebook) Quest 3 became the world's first hardware product with the second-generation Snapdragon XR2 platform, launching on the same day on September 28.
The first generation Snapdragon AR1 platform is the first dedicated platform established by Qualcomm for the next generation of smart glasses products, focusing on strengthening the shooting ability.
The platform features a 14-bit dual ISP that supports top-notch instant shooting while combining some of the cutting-edge technologies found on smartphones, such as automatic exposure, automatic face detection, computational HDR, and portrait mode.
Qualcomm predicts that in the future, smart glasses will be able to be worn all day, look similar to traditional sunglasses, support real-time shooting photos and videos, and users no longer need to take out their mobile phones from their pockets to operate.
The first generation Snapdragon AR1 platform is equipped with motion health sensors and visual search, and users can use voice commands to interact with smart glasses, thus completely freeing their hands.
Sihongguo said that the functions supported by the platform are relatively simple, and all processing can be completed in the glasses end, without the need to rely on mobile phone processing. After the virtual assistant in the smart glasses responds to the user's instructions, it can provide situational information in front of the user, such as providing the user with product information through visual search in the shopping place, real-time translation, cargo selection and navigation.
The Snapdragon AR1 is also a scalable platform that supports a variety of different configurations, making it more suitable for OEM customization and can produce camera-only models, or models that support monocular and binocular displays.
In addition, the platform also supports real-time video broadcasting and music streaming. The Ray-Ban Meta series will debut on the platform.
For AR (augmented reality) glasses with higher immersion and large display screens, they need to complete the processing work on the phone side, which is more complicated to develop. Sihongguo said Qualcomm will continue to invest in solving this problem in the future platform.