During Snapdragon Summit 2022, Qualcomm Technologies revealed new AR technology, the Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 Platform. This platform is the fundament for comfortable, light-weight AR glasses. It offers a 40% smaller PCB area in the glass and a 2.5x better AI performance, while consuming 50% less power. “We built Snapdragon AR2 to address the unique challenges of headworn AR,” said Hugo Swart of Qualcomm Technologies.
The new Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 Platform offers a set of new characteristics that, in short, enable the development of high-performance, sleek AR glasses. To improve the adoption of AR, making the glasses wearable is one of the biggest challenges, vendors are currently facing. Therefore, Qualcomm has focused on developing the new platform on which a next generation AR glasses can be developed.
AR technology for sleek glasses
“We built Snapdragon AR2 to address the unique challenges of headworn 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, Qualcomm Technologies. “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.”
The characteristics are:
- A multi-chip distributed processing architecture combined with customized AP blocks to better balance the weight and decrease the arm width on either side of the glasses.
- A processor that occupies a 40% smaller PCB area on the glass.
- 5x better AI performance while consuming 50% less power to enable a set of glasses that can be worn for an extended period.
- Latency-sensitive perception data is processed directly on the glasses and offloads more complex data processing requirements to a Snapdragon-powered smartphone, PC or to other compatible host devices3.
- The AR processor supports nine concurrent cameras for user and environmental understanding.
- A dedicated hardware acceleration engine that improves user motion tracking and localization, an AI accelerator to reduce latency for sensitive input interactions such as hand tracking or 6DoF, and a reprojection engine for a smoother experience.
- The connectivity platform utilizes Qualcomm® FastConnect™ 7800 connectivity system to use Wi-Fi 7 technology. It reaches <2ms latency between the AR glasses and the smartphone or host device. Embedded support for the FastConnect XR Software Suite 2.0 enables better control of XR data to improve latency, reduce jitter and avoid unwanted interference.
New possibilities
“Microsoft worked closely with Qualcomm on the platform requirements for Snapdragon AR2 to help define the purpose-built, foundational technologies to unlock new possibilities in AR experiences,” said Rubén Caballero, Corporate Vice President of Mixed Reality, Devices & Technology at Microsoft. “Snapdragon AR2 platform innovations will revolutionize headworn AR devices that will transform immersive productivity and collaboration and we look forward to seeing the innovation that Qualcomm and its partners will bring to market.”
