The Snapdragon XR1 is the company’s first chipset that is fully dedicated to augmented and virtual reality. The processor was just announced at the Augmented Reality World 2018 Expo in Santa Clara.
Qualcomm phone chipsets have been used by multiple AR and VR headsets in the past. However, none of these have been specially made for the extended reality headsets. So when the company comes out with a stand-alone AR/VR chipset, there is a lot one can expect.
The processor is meant for “lean back and 360 viewing” and supports simple controllers. It supports 4k videos at 60fps, voice activation, and controllers that detect movement with six degrees of freedom. It also has a heterogeneous computing architecture and an AI engine.
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The chipset will practically make entry-level VR and AR gear cheaper. And can be expected to be used in devices that are releasing by the end of this year. Though the new chip is no match for the Qualcomm 845, the current state of the art, when it comes to advanced processing tasks such as gaming, it should work perfectly for simpler tasks such as viewing a video. Hiren Bhinde, product management director of XR, explains this as the difference between high quality and premium quality experiences, the XR being high quality and the 845 being premium quality.
“As technology evolves and consumer demand grows, we envision XR devices playing a wider variety of roles in consumers’ and workers’ daily lives,” said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, Mobile Business Unit, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “By integrating powerful visuals, high-fidelity audio, and rich interactive experiences, XR1 will help create a new era of high-quality, mainstream XR devices for consumers.”
It was also announced that OEMs Meta, VIVE, Vuzix and Pico are developing the first dedicated XR1 platform.
Even though this is the very basic of extended reality chipsets, it does open up the possibility for higher models in the XR range which is pretty exciting news for developers as well as users. It can be deduced that the company believes that the time for extended reality devices to get into mass adoption is about to come.