During Snapdragon Summit 2022 in Hawaii, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. Revealed SnapdragonAR2 Gen 1 Platformfeaturing innovative augmented reality (AR) technology that will unlock a new generation of stylish, high-capacity lenses.
The company built Snapdragon AR2 from the ground up to revolutionize helmet glass design and dial the beginning of a new era of spatial computing experiences for the combination of the real world and the metaverse.
Qualcomm released this technology specifically to help create the thinnest possible, high-performance AR glass: “We have built a multi-chip distributed processing architecture combined with custom IP blocks”.
The main processor occupies a 40 percent smaller PCB area on the glass and the overall platform delivers 2.5 times better AI performance and consumes 50 percent less power to help achieve AR lenses than consume less than 1 W of powerwhich long periods of time of use.
Snapdragon AR2 architecture
To better balance weight and decrease arm width on either side of the AR glasses, the Snapdragon AR2 uses a multi-chip architecture that includes an AR processor, an AR coprocessor, and a connectivity platform.
Snapdragon AR2 works dynamically to distribute latency-sensitive perceptual data processing directly to the lenses, offloading the most complex data processing requirements to a Snapdragon-enabled smartphone, PC or other carrier device.
The AR processor is optimized for low latency motion-to-photon while supporting up to nine simultaneous cameras for user and environment insight.
Its enhanced perception capabilities include a dedicated hardware acceleration engine that improves tracking and tracing of user movement, an AI accelerator to reduce latency of input sensitive interactions and a reprojection engine for a smoother experience.
In addition, the connectivity platform uses the Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 connectivity system to unlock Wi-Fi 7 technology and achieves <2ms latency between the AR glasses and the smartphone or carrier device.