Yesterday on the Snapdragon Summit, Hugo Swart, Vice President, XR Product Administration, Qualcomm, unveiled the Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1, a {hardware} platform fabricated from three chips that may energy the next-gen augmented actuality glasses.

The brand new Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 is the newest addition to Qualcomm’s prolonged actuality (XR) product line.

The system is fabricated from an AR processor, positioned inside the correct arm of the glasses, an AR co-processor positioned on the entrance within the center, proper behind the digital camera module, and a Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 connectivity chip positioned contained in the left temple.

For as soon as, Qualcomm didn’t combine all of the chips in a single giant SoC however has break up the {hardware} into three small packages to assist OEMs ship skinny and lightweight designs for his or her next-gen AR glasses.

To allow the slim type issue, the Snapdragon AR2 distributes the processing workload between the glasses and a Snapdragon-powered smartphone, PC, or different appropriate host gadgets.

In response to the chip maker, the principle processor occupies a 40% smaller PCB space on glass in comparison with the Wi-fi AR Sensible Viewer Reference Design powered by Snapdragon XR2.

The AR2 platform achieves a 50% enhance in AI efficiency whereas consuming 50% much less energy than the earlier technology. Qualcomm designed the AR2 to energy glasses that may compute utilizing lower than 1W.

The AR processor, optimized for low motion-to-photon latency (sub-9ms), helps as much as 9 cameras for scanning the surroundings and for the person.

The AR processor contains a {hardware} acceleration engine for higher person movement monitoring and localization, and an AI accelerator to cut back latency for enter interactions akin to hand monitoring or 6DoF. Lastly, the chip manages the show output.

The AR co-processor aggregates digital camera and sensor knowledge and options eye-tracking for foveated rendering, to optimize graphics rendering efficiency. Moreover, the computing unit delivers iris authentication.

The connectivity chip is predicated on Qualcomm FastConnect 7800, a connectivity system that helps Wi-Fi 7. Because of this tiny connectivity chip, OEMs will be capable of ship sub-2ms latency between the AR glasses and the smartphone host system. Qualcomm offers the FastConnect XR Software program Suite 2.0, to assist builders higher management the XR knowledge, scale back latency and jitter, and stop interference.

Qualcomm presents the Snapdragon Areas XR Developer Platform, an OpenXR SDK tailor-made to Qualcomm XR merchandise that gives generally wanted software program capabilities that the majority XR apps require.

Since Snapdragon Areas adheres to the open-source specs, the AR2 system of three chips might additionally work with a non-Snapdragon telephone or cellular system. We are able to safely assume that Snapdragon Areas works optimally with the latest Snapdragon cellular gadgets.

Historical past of Qualcomm XR platforms:

Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 1, Qualcomm’s newest chipset for VR headsets, combines Blended Actuality (MR) and Digital actuality (VR), launched on October 11, 2022, and powers the Meta Quest Professional introduced at Meta Join 2022. The XR2 Plus delivers 50% greater sustained energy and 30% improved thermal efficiency over its predecessor.

Snapdragon XR2 5G (XR2 Gen 1) launched on December 4, 2019, an XR platform that powers, amongst different gadgets, the Lynx R-1 Blended Actuality (MR) headset, and the Wi-fi AR Sensible Viewer reference design.

Snapdragon XR1 launched in Could 2018 that powers the Lenovo ThinkReality A3 good glasses launched at CES 2021.

Filed in Cellphones. Learn extra about Android, Augmented Actuality (AR), Qualcomm, Snapdragon and Snapdragon Summit.