Movidius’ New Vision Processor Could Make Future Smartphone Cameras Dope

Movidius’ New Vision Processor Could Make Future Smartphone Cameras Dope

You might remember Movidius as one of the key companies that enable the 3D mapping powers of Google’s Project Tango phone. Today, the company is announcing the second generation of its vision processor, which has the potential to enables a slew of everyday camera enhancements for future smartphones.

Like its predecessor, the new Myriad 2 SoC is designed specifically to help mobile phones process data from cameras in new and exciting ways. It can either be the main application processor, or an auxiliary co-processor that’s there just for its vision powers. The new chip is 20 per cent more power efficient than its predecessor. That means that in addition to the 3D depth mapping capabilities it enabled before, it will be useful for an entirely new suite of computational photography applications. Specifically, it’s designed to improve everyday smartphone camera performance of features like autofocus and HDR, as well as some we haven’t seen done as well like gesture recognition and augmented reality.

Of course, as with the original Movidius chip, the key is getting the powerful chip into smartphones that we can use. The company told us that we can expect to see some mainstream devices powered by the Myriad 2 processor next year. Additionally, Movidius is working with third-party software developers to create new tools built on its platform.

As we’ve seen with Project Tango, the possibilities for advanced vision processing tech are incredible. Now it’s just a question of getting them into gadgets we actually use. [Movidius]


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