Qualcomm has kicked off a raft of new announcements ahead of Mobile World Congress, including their new AI Engine powered by both new, and existing Snapdragon processors.
The AI engine utilises both hardware and software to produce AI related tasks including speeding up options such as camera effects like bokeh, face unlock, and scene detection. The AI engine will be supported on the Snapdragon 845, 835, 820 and 660 mobile platforms, though Qualcomm points out that the Snapdragon 845 will benefit from ‘cutting-edge on-device AI processing’.
The Qualcomm AI Engine supports the Neural Processing Engine which includes support for both Google’s Tensorflow and Facebook’s Caffe and Caffe2 frameworks. The AI Engine also supports the Android Neural Networks API found in Android Oreo, and the Hexagon Neural Network (NN) will allow developers freedom to choose the processor for their AI-centric application.
Speaking about the AI Engine, Gary Brotman, director of product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. said
On-device AI demands multiple hardware architectures, software tools, and frameworks to meet developer demand and performance thresholds for the myriad of AI-powered features and apps arriving on smartphones this year. 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.
In their announcement, Qualcomm has listed a number of partners including Xiaomi, OnePlus, vivo, OPPO, Motorola, ASUS and ZTE who are already utilising the AI engine components to ‘to accelerate AI applications on their devices’.
Qualcomm will be demoing the capabilities of the Snapdragon 845 and the AI Engine at Mobile World Congress.
