Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit Day 3 Live Blog: ACPC and XR
by Dr. Ian Cutress on December 5, 2019 1:08 PM EST01:13PM EST - The annual Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit is in its final day, and the main focal points for discussion are the Windows on Snapdragon-based Always Connected PCs, with updates to the 8cx family of processors, and the into augmented reality and virtual reality with Qualcomm's efforts in XR being expanded. We're here ready to report, with the presentation set to start at 2pm ET / 7pm UTC.
01:57PM EST - We're just getting seated, a few minutes to start
02:05PM EST - Here we go: SVP/GM Handset products Jim Tran to the stage
02:06PM EST - 820k views on QC yesterday
02:07PM EST - (note, that wasn't on the YT stream, which has only 3200 - they've hired influencers to manage their social accounts for the week)
02:07PM EST - Video time
02:08PM EST - VP of XR, Hugo Swart to the stage
02:08PM EST - How many of you have experienced a poor conference call?
02:09PM EST - XR, or extended reality, can be better than reality
02:09PM EST - especially for conference calls
02:09PM EST - We have news that will change how we socialise that will combine XR, AI, and 5G
02:09PM EST - The digital transformation has begun
02:10PM EST - Everyone and everything will be connected
02:10PM EST - XR = VR, AR, MR
02:10PM EST - XR is the next mobile platform
02:10PM EST - Hands free, immersive interactions
02:10PM EST - (isn't that just.... reality?)
02:11PM EST - Taking optimizations for XR and moving it to the main SoC
02:11PM EST - Building reference designs
02:11PM EST - enabling OEMs to come to market
02:11PM EST - Make VR really mobile
02:11PM EST - Oculus Go, Quest, Vive, many others in China
02:11PM EST - Transported into a virtual world
02:12PM EST - Kids call VR 'the new world'
02:12PM EST - Qualcomm is creating a new world
02:12PM EST - digital elements overlaid with the real world
02:13PM EST - Use cases for industry to improve efficiency
02:13PM EST - Snapdragon powers the top XR platforms in the world
02:13PM EST - 30+ devices with Snapdragon
02:13PM EST - Don't intend to stop
02:13PM EST - POtential to be ubiquitous and everywher
02:14PM EST - Every new Walmart employee is now trained in VR
02:14PM EST - There's a demo in the demo room later
02:14PM EST - How to face an angry customer
02:14PM EST - also industrial logistics
02:14PM EST - Tourism, retail
02:15PM EST - Enabled by different device form factors
02:15PM EST - Now we have standalone headsets
02:15PM EST - Truly free and mobile
02:15PM EST - QC created this category with partners
02:15PM EST - It's here for the long term
02:16PM EST - The next category, especially for 5G, is XR viewers
02:16PM EST - processing is split between the glasses and a device in your pocket
02:16PM EST - QC now has customers launching XR viewers
02:17PM EST - Experiencing immersive video and games on the train
02:17PM EST - Now Boundless XR
02:17PM EST - Distributed processing: headset with nearby PC with 60 GHz connectivity
02:17PM EST - Wi-Gig
02:18PM EST - split processing
02:18PM EST - tracking in the headset, heavy lifting on the PC
02:18PM EST - announced at GDC, customers launching now
02:18PM EST - Boundless XR with 5G as well
02:19PM EST - Infrastructure and cloud via 5G does the heavy lifting
02:19PM EST - Four new form factors: Standalone, Viewers, Boundless for PC, Boundless for 5G
02:19PM EST - Market segments: Consumer, Enterprise, Operator
02:20PM EST - Andrea Hogan to the stage, Senior Director of Partner Marketing
02:21PM EST - 'We have had innovative announcements'
02:21PM EST - 20 minutes of a partner showcase
02:21PM EST - push the boundaries of the technology
02:21PM EST - QC breaks through and the ecosystem leaps forward
02:22PM EST - three new korean operators announced recently as partners
02:22PM EST - 'XR is going to change the way we interact with the world'
02:22PM EST - such as with gaming
02:22PM EST - XR has been tied to gaming
02:23PM EST - Consumers enjoy new game worlds
02:23PM EST - Partnering with Unity
02:23PM EST - Unity empowers everyone
02:23PM EST - 34 billion installs of unity games in the last year
02:23PM EST - Unity to the stage
02:25PM EST - AR music experiences made with Unity
02:25PM EST - Beat Saber
02:25PM EST - shifts in human computer interactions
02:26PM EST - low powered computing devices to ingest real world data
02:26PM EST - moving from the cloud to the PC to the new form factors
02:26PM EST - Devices need to interact and react
02:27PM EST - Using your phone to interact with people
02:28PM EST - Using XR glasses to check email and synced with the cloud
02:28PM EST - Unity can build these spacial applications
02:28PM EST - Unity is building the tools
02:28PM EST - Unity AR Foundation
02:29PM EST - Unity Project Tiny initiative - tool for XR developers to shrink apps
02:29PM EST - Mixed Reality Studio (MARS) to build multi-device experiences with real-world data
02:30PM EST - QC back to the stage
02:30PM EST - Unity is the ultimate development platform for XR
02:30PM EST - Now Enterprise XR
02:30PM EST - A connected workforce
02:31PM EST - Mitchell International to the stage, Automotive Physical Damage EVP
02:32PM EST - Restoration of vehicles post accident
02:33PM EST - connecting owners and repairers and insurers
02:33PM EST - Also medical claims
02:36PM EST - More change in automotive in the next 5 years than the last 50
02:37PM EST - Sensors need to be correct and work fine when damaged
02:37PM EST - A car mechanic is now more like a software engineer
02:37PM EST - Using augmented reality for years in this market
02:38PM EST - Toyota measuring paint thickness in XR
02:38PM EST - It took 2 people a day. Now one person takes 4 hours with XR assistance
02:38PM EST - Two cameras to see behind a trailer
02:39PM EST - When these are repaired, they have to be repaired properly
02:40PM EST - Combining artificial intelligence and XR
02:40PM EST - New XR for enterprise efficiency
02:40PM EST - PoC for vehicle repair
02:41PM EST - XR Glasses
02:42PM EST - Detects vehicle, show cases technical instructions in the glasses. Verbally interacting with the glasses through voice recognition and commands. All hands free
02:42PM EST - Access to experts
02:43PM EST - Demo in the demo lounge later today
02:43PM EST - This is the first step
02:43PM EST - QC back to the stage
02:44PM EST - Many innovative companies and institutions deliver at scale with XR solutions
02:44PM EST - fuelling business growth
02:44PM EST - Accenture XR to the stage
02:45PM EST - Accenture XR is global
02:45PM EST - Four pillars
02:45PM EST - Maximize sales
02:46PM EST - Key Clients and projects
02:46PM EST - Connected Worker, Immersive Learning
02:48PM EST - Virtual Merchandising
02:50PM EST - More demos in Vegas
02:50PM EST - QC to the stage
02:50PM EST - Operators offering XR content
02:51PM EST - KDDI to the stage
02:51PM EST - 5G+XR for consumers
02:52PM EST - Focusing on two main assets: Visual Position Service, and Smartglasses
02:53PM EST - Social integration with XR
02:55PM EST - smart glasses in stores from 1st November
02:55PM EST - More plans for 2020
02:56PM EST - Operator offering for small and medium businesses
02:56PM EST - Deutsche Telekom to the stage
02:56PM EST - AR FieldAdvisor
02:56PM EST - Remote field support
02:56PM EST - Solving key XR challenges for DT engineers
02:57PM EST - nreal AR Glasses
02:57PM EST - Beta is ready
02:58PM EST - field technicians plug the smart glasses into the phone. Uses spatial computing interface to call an expert, two way video call
02:58PM EST - (no mention of lag)
03:02PM EST - Journey to new realities
03:03PM EST - In the next few years, get a single device from AR to VR, replacing all your screens
03:03PM EST - The next step is here
03:03PM EST - New platform dedicated to XR
03:03PM EST - Enable new experiences
03:03PM EST - Qualcomm XR2 with 5G
03:04PM EST - 8K video, 3K per eye, true mixed reality
03:04PM EST - 3d reconstruction, semantic segmentation
03:04PM EST - Holographic telepresence
03:04PM EST - XR social experiences
03:04PM EST - XR assistant
03:05PM EST - Combines XR, 5G, and AI in a single platform
03:06PM EST - built for dual display, dual compute, optimizations and algorithm that a smartphone chip can't do
03:06PM EST - XR2 sits above XR1
03:07PM EST - XR2 for premium, XR1 for mainstream
03:07PM EST - Meet the different needs of XR users
03:07PM EST - Reference design for XR2
03:07PM EST - HMD accelerator program
03:08PM EST - specs for XR2 will be withheld for a few months
03:08PM EST - Head of XR to the stage
03:09PM EST - Understanding XR complexity
03:10PM EST - QC is best at high perf and low power
03:10PM EST - low latency too
03:10PM EST - Fueling Premium Quality VR
03:11PM EST - AR learning
03:11PM EST - moving in the virtual world
03:11PM EST - Visuals, audio, interactivity
03:12PM EST - XR2 definition was built thinking about these pillars
03:13PM EST - Performance against Snapdragon 835.
03:14PM EST - Audio, visuals, interactions
03:14PM EST - Gaming in XR is very different in consumer electronic devices
03:14PM EST - Requires more shader processing, more texel rates, higher resolutions
03:16PM EST - Mixing graphics and watching videos in VR
03:16PM EST - 360-degree videos
03:16PM EST - Support 360-video at 8K60 decode
03:16PM EST - 120 Hz refresh rates, HDR10+
03:16PM EST - custom silicon for reduced latency in AR
03:17PM EST - High perf and low power is crucial
03:18PM EST - Support AptX audio
03:19PM EST - Voice UI
03:19PM EST - e.g. 'say open door' in a game and it opens doors
03:19PM EST - Say 'Press F' to pay respects
03:19PM EST - Audio context detection
03:20PM EST - eg, hear when the pizza guy comes to the door
03:20PM EST - Multi-player communication
03:23PM EST - 7 camera support on XR2
03:23PM EST - Customers require more cameras
03:24PM EST - Map the environment to a virtual world with XR2
03:25PM EST - They all require world class CPU, GPU, Hexagon DSP, AI Engine
03:25PM EST - Controllers and Hand Tracking
03:26PM EST - Mixed Reality
03:26PM EST - Wear a VR glass and see levels of immersion (virtual or real)
03:26PM EST - video see through
03:27PM EST - 5G for high bandwidth, low latency
03:27PM EST - Premium XR everywhere
03:28PM EST - VR movie in XR2 glasses in 8K 360
03:28PM EST - Enables No wires and cables
03:30PM EST - XR in 5G with Pokemon Go ?
03:31PM EST - Niantic to the stage
03:32PM EST - Pokemon Go Fest requires infrastructure
03:33PM EST - Continue to evolve the Pokemon Go platform to develop new experiences
03:33PM EST - Announcing multi-year collab with Qualcomm and Pokemon Go for consumers
03:33PM EST - Using QC APIs and Niantic's real world APIs
03:33PM EST - Starts with XR2 and cloud mapping features
03:33PM EST - 5G leverage
03:34PM EST - Shared social experiences
03:34PM EST - Encouraging people to go outside
03:34PM EST - (I thought the benefit of 5G is that you *don't* need to be there)
03:36PM EST - XR2 with Purina
03:37PM EST - (So, you can have 50 cats without actually having cats?)
03:39PM EST - Brainstorming product design with Purina
03:39PM EST - Multi-user collab event
03:39PM EST - People get avatars
03:40PM EST - Eyetracking to give immersion
03:40PM EST - 2D interfaces with interaction
03:40PM EST - Conduct holographic meetings
03:42PM EST - Virtual environments as well
03:43PM EST - Using AI to simulate mouth movements based on audio
03:44PM EST - Collaborative solutions
03:44PM EST - Powered by XR2 and 5G. (Would a business use 5G like that? Or local network?)
03:44PM EST - Does XR2 still require an external Wi-Fi 6 chip / Wi-Gig chip ?
03:45PM EST - Don McGuire to the stage to talk about ACPC
03:46PM EST - Miguel Nunes to the stage, PM for Compute Products
03:47PM EST - Qualcomm: 'Leading the PC Industry to Mobile'
03:48PM EST - 'we don't believe fans should be in PCs'
03:48PM EST - there seems to be a number of chinese devices there
03:49PM EST - 'Battery life that lasts for days'
03:50PM EST - Three premium devices in the market
03:50PM EST - Surface Pro X with SQ1
03:50PM EST - $500 x86 PC example
03:51PM EST - so, Qualcomm is going after the $500 market? I'll hold them to that
03:54PM EST - Video of a chunky PC with Snapdragon
03:55PM EST - Snapdragon 8c and 7c announced
03:55PM EST - More price points and perfromance levels
03:56PM EST - A snapdragon for everyone
03:56PM EST - Focusing on user experiences
03:57PM EST - These areas matter for users beyond CPU/GPU
03:57PM EST - Security across every tier
03:58PM EST - Devices are now protected with hardware root of trust
03:58PM EST - location access policies
03:59PM EST - Gaze correction
04:01PM EST - Uses 50x less power than x86
04:01PM EST - 7c has LTE
04:02PM EST - 5+ TOPs
04:02PM EST - Octocore Kryo, Adreno GPU
04:02PM EST - (looks like an 855?)
04:03PM EST - 2x the battery life vs competitors
04:03PM EST - SiP design, including modem and RF
04:04PM EST - Wi-Fi too
04:04PM EST - Now 8c
04:05PM EST - 8c is 7nm
04:05PM EST - 6+ TOPs. Faster freq over 7c ?
04:06PM EST - Integrated X24 modem, or can be used with X55 for 5G
04:07PM EST - Now talking ecosystem
04:08PM EST - Customers want speed, durability, design, security
04:09PM EST - CUstomers love all-day battery
04:10PM EST - ACPC is now targeting enterprise, small business, students and developers
04:10PM EST - lower cost enables new opportunities in emerging markets
04:10PM EST - Adobe Creative Cloud Suite coming to ARM64
04:11PM EST - Business model evolution
04:11PM EST - unlocking the creator
04:12PM EST - Accelerating a new wave of computing
04:12PM EST - Windows remote desktop with low latency
04:13PM EST - MS is committed to bring xCloud to Snapdragon
04:14PM EST - Digital transformation is here today
04:15PM EST - 5G mmWave can elevate enterprise use cases
04:16PM EST - 5 Gbps indoors in initial tests for private 5G networks in an office
04:17PM EST - Zoom video communications is a partner
04:19PM EST - transcription services
04:19PM EST - (this is just a software ad)
04:21PM EST - Zoom is going Arm native, demo later today
04:24PM EST - Qualcomm's 8c reference design video
04:24PM EST - looks kinda cool
04:25PM EST - 8cx optimized for business customers
04:26PM EST - 'Snapdragon for everyone'
04:26PM EST - Yes, QC has supply (a dig at Intel)
04:30PM EST - That's a wrap.
14 Comments
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raywin - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
that Lenovo project limitless looks interesting, price and specs dependinglorenalba - Tuesday, December 10, 2019 - link
Is it available in United kingdom because I want to purchase it for my friend and he is living in London but I am in America. Actually I am doing business you can see my web https://iwillbling.com/ here and I am quite busy now a days in my work but if this product is available in the UK so I will buy online and also deliver at friend's home.Raqia - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
No doubt the "8c" and "7c" are lightly modified 855 and 710 derivatives. Would prefer it if they just called it that but rolled out a feature opening the bootloader on Android devices...Raqia - Friday, December 6, 2019 - link
Actually, given their naming for the CPU and GPU (Kryo 490, Adreno 675) and their performance of 6+ TOPS, this is more likely to be a die harvested 8cx with some GPU and DSP units disabled.Santoval - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
"03:34PM EST - Encouraging people to go outside03:34PM EST - (I thought the benefit of 5G is that you *don't* need to be there)"
Qualcomm actually mean that people are "encouraged" to go outside because 5G (at least its mmWave variant) does not work at all inside. Unless of course you have installed a few 5G femto/nanocells in your home of business, which are not cheap. 5G's <6GHz variant, which is just slightly souped up LTE rather than true 5G, should work inside, though barely (depending on how close the working frequency is to 6 GHz).
Not that I foresee any extensive mmWave coverage of 5G any time soon. Conventional cell towers are nowhere nearly enough to cover an entire city (there's no chance in hell of rural coverage, neither today nor ever), so many smaller cells are required to be installed at high density. That, again, requires a lot of money. When 5G was being developed and I heard about the insane frequencies it would employ I strongly doubted the laws of physics would just kill themselves so that telcos can cover cities at a reasonable cost. And guess what, the laws of physics are still in the way..
Kabm - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
Qualcomm did it again! Now the US have a strange cellulor bandwith again that is different from the rest of the world and that may keep Qualcomm on the monopoly!GreenReaper - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
"Isn't that just, reality?" -- it's like reality, only worse, and you pay them for it.Like Better Than Life, the truth rarely matches up to the marketing.
Kishoreshack - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
Why no 8cx successor?GreyFox7 - Friday, December 6, 2019 - link
So... What's new with the 8CX? It seems like nothing, they just paired it with a 5G modem. Where's the beef??? The increased IPC, lower power, faster this or more that? 9CX or 8CXX, where are they going with this.DoktorOmen - Monday, December 9, 2019 - link
Don't you think it would be better if you summarize and write an article based on the notes?This way there is just bunch of vomited sentences that sometime don't make sense.
I mean thanks for the coverage but something like 865 preview article would be great.