Qualcomm wants to be the chip inside whatever replaces your smartphone, and it just announced two products toward that end

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said Tuesday that the institution is moving connected implicit 40 antithetic AI wearable devices — including jewelry, earbuds with cameras, pins, and watches — a motion of however aggressively the chipmaker is betting that the adjacent large computing level won’t beryllium a telephone astatine all.

To powerfulness that vision, Qualcomm is announcing 2 caller offerings: a level called Snapdragon Reality Elite for mixed world glasses, designed to tally much almighty on-device AI, and the Scalable Turnkey AI-Ready Toolkit (START), a operation of hardware modules and a bundle stack for AI devices, starting with astute glasses.

Compared to its erstwhile XR platform, the caller Snapdragon Reality Elite delivers improvements of up to 60% successful GPU performance, up to 30% successful CPU performance, and up to 160% successful NPU performance, according to the company. Percentage gains successful spot specs tin beryllium hard to contextualize, but Qualcomm offers 1 factual information point, saying the level tin tally a 3-billion-parameter connection exemplary astatine 45 tokens per 2nd — accelerated capable for quick, responsive AI interactions. Qualcomm says the spot volition besides alteration amended caput and manus tracking, on with improved see-through capabilities.

The Snapdragon Reality Elite supports 4.4K per-eye solution astatine 90 fps, a humble bump from the XR2+ Gen 2’s 4.3K per-eye resolution. (The higher the per-eye solution and framework rate, the sharper and smoother the ocular experience, which matters astir for reducing the question sickness and oculus strain that’ve historically made extended headset usage uncomfortable.)

Qualcomm says the level is designed to powerfulness 2 types of devices: standalone video-see-through (VST) headsets, which furniture integer contented implicit a camera provender of the existent world, and lightweight, tethered optical-see-through (OST) glasses, which blend integer imagery straight into your tract of view. Among the archetypal devices to usage it: XREAL Project Aura, shown astatine Google I/O earlier this year, and an upcoming instrumentality from Play for Dream.

START, meanwhile, consists of an AR chip, a bundle platform, companion apps, and a white-label programme aimed astatine helping hardware makers get to marketplace faster. Through the achromatic statement program, the institution is offering 3 notation designs: an audio + camera setup akin to Meta’s Ray-Ban astute glasses, a monocular display, and a binocular display.

Eyewear manufacturers Inspecs and O’Neill — owned by TitanFlex — volition beryllium among the archetypal partners successful the achromatic statement program. Qualcomm said START volition grow beyond astute glasses to enactment different signifier factors successful the future.

Amon’s comments, made to CNBC, soma retired the strategical logic down some announcements. He argued that arsenic companies question to stitchery much real-world information from users to powerfulness their AI agents, a caller question of hardware startups gathering caller signifier factors volition emerge, with large implications for established smartphone players similar Apple and Samsung.

“I deliberation there’s going to beryllium a batch of experimentation with antithetic signifier factors,” Amon said. “Right now, we person implicit 40 designs of those devices, and I’m telling you, the types of signifier factors are very, precise broad.” He added that, “The rule is thing that you wear, thing [that] is with you each the time, thing that tin spot the satellite astir you, truthful you person discourse and person the quality for you to entree an cause and speech to the agent.”

To that end, Qualcomm is explicitly positioning itself arsenic the foundational silicon furniture for immoderate comes aft the smartphone. START’s white-label program, successful particular, is designed to little the obstruction for caller entrants.