Qualcomm’s New AI Engine Enhances Capabilities Of Existing Snapdragon Chips

Qualcomm today announced the Qualcomm Artificial Intelligence engine which is made up to multiple hardware and software components to enhance on-device artificial intelligence enabled user experiences on select Snapdragon chips. The new AI engine is supported by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, 835, 820, and 660 chips with the Snapdragon 845 delivering “cutting-edge on-device AI processing.”

One of the main benefits of on-device AI is to ensure AI-powered user experiences deliver better performance with or without a network connection. The core hardware architectures of Snapdragon chips are supported within the AI engine for quick and effective on-device AI processing.

The software-based components of Qualcomm’s new AI engine include the Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine which is a software framework designed to make it easy for developers to choose the optimal Snapdragon core for the user experience they wish to deliver. It supports Tensorflow, Caffe, and Caffe2 frameworks aside from the Open Neural Network Excahnge interchange format.

There’s also support for the Android Neural Networks API which will first appear in the Snapdragon 845 as well as the Hexagon Neural Network that lets developers run AI algorithms directly on the Hexagon Vector Processor.

“The AI Engine capabilities of select Snapdragon mobile platforms have and will continue to fuel AI innovation among our OEMs and ecosystem partners, and are engineered to accelerate the development and delivery of rich, seamless and compelling features for consumers,” said Gary Bortman, the director of product management at Qualcomm.

Qualcomm says that manufacturers among OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, ASUS, Motorola, ZTE, Nubia, Blackshark, and Smartisan are planning to optimize AI apps using the new AI engine on their future flagship smartphones powered by its Snapdragon chips.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: AI (Artificial Intelligence), Qualcomm