Qualcomm on Wednesday announced the Vision Intelligence Platform, its latest offering coming in the form of a chipset series specifically designed for the Internet of Things segment. The lineup is Qualcomm’s first product family of its kind built on the 10nm FinFET process node technology and entails two chips – the QCS603 and QCS605. As is the case with the company’s recent smartphone silicon, the Vision Intelligence Platform places a major emphasis on local artificial intelligence computing and use cases spanning everything from computer vision to general machine learning, being equipped with the firm’s AI Engine and its latest image signal processor.
Among other things, Qualcomm sees the QCS603 and QCS605 eventually powering high-end 180- and 360-degree cameras, smart displays, wearables, robots, and conventional camera security systems. The ultimate goal of the new solutions is to allow for “significantly smarter” IoT devices, according to the tech giant’s Product Management VP Joseph Bousaba. The QCS603 and QCS605 both rely on ARM-based multicore CPUs and a vector processor, thus effectively being IoT counterparts to the company’s latest mobile chips. The hardware should allow for more efficient IoT applications including edge computing, with Qualcomm seeking to streamline its implementations by offering both computer vision and machine learning software development kits that will allow manufacturers to commercialize the new chips without having to code for them from scratch. In terms of technical details, the new silicon series offers Qualcomm’s octa-core Kryo 300 CPU, Adreno 615 GPU, Spectra 270 ISP, dedicated sensor and audio DSPs, and the Hexagon 685 Vector Processor. Bluetooth 5.1 and aptX audio support is also part of the package, as is compatibility with the firm’s proprietary 3D Audio Suite and the 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard with MU-MIMO.
Qualcomm is already sampling both the QCS603 and QCS605, as well as several VR 360 camera reference designs based on the latter chip which were devised in collaboration with original design manufacturer Altek Corporation. Flow production is expected to begin in the second half of the year, meaning first commercial products powered by the newly announced IoT chips may debut even before the next holiday season. Ricoh THETA and KEDACOM both already formalized plans to commercialize Qualcomm’s Vision Intelligence Platform in the near future, the San Diego-based chipmaker said.
