Qualcomm Launches Intelligence Vision Chips For Powering Security Cameras, Robots, Smart Displays

Qualcomm has done well for itself in the smartphone space, as more often not, you will find that a noteworthy Android phone is running on the company's hardware, and specifically one of its Snapdragon chipsets. That is not Qualcomm's only focus, however. In a press release today, Qualcomm announced its new Vision Intelligence Platform with its first family of system-on-chips (SoCs) purpose-built for the growing Internet of Things (IoT) market.

The new chips are built on an advanced 10-nanometer FinFET manufacturing process. They include the QCS605 and QCS603, both of which are engineered to deliver powerful computing capabilities for on-device camera processing and machine learning. According to Qualcomm, they offer exception power and thermal efficiency, and can be used across a wide range of IoT applications.

"Our goal is to make IoT devices significantly smarter as we help customers bring powerful on-device intelligence, camera processing and security. AI is already enabling cameras with object detection, tracking, classification and facial recognition, robots that avoid obstacles autonomously, and action cameras that learn and generate a video summary of your latest adventure, but this is really just the beginning," said Joseph Bousaba, vice president, product management, Qualcomm.

Both chips pair a Hexagon 685 Vector processor with the company's Adreno 615 graphics. They're also outfitted with Qualcomm's Snapdragon neural processing engine (NPE) programming interface. These bits collective comprise the artificial intelligence engine, which is the major point of focus here. Qualcomm says its platform can deliver up to 2.1 TOPS of compute performance for deep neural network interfaces.

The company also points to support for 4K video resolution at 60 frames per second, or 5.7K at 30 fps, along with being able to handle multiple concurrent video streams at lower resolutions. Qualcomm says its platform integrates the most power camera processor it has ever created, consisting of dual 14-bit Spectra 270 ISP supporting dual 16MP sensors.

Qualcomm has begun sampling its QCS605 and QCS603 chips, and has also made available QC605-based VR 360 camera reference designs developed in partnership with Altek Corporation.