XR is the blanket term for all the different kinds of ‘reality’ you’ll see used to describe various kinds of glasses and headsets. VR, AR, MR, and whatever else they may come up with. Obviously this is becoming a much bigger thing as the years go on, and Qualcomm has decided it can’t keep using mobile phone chips to make things work. SO it’s launching a new dedicated chip for all kinds of XR – the XR2.
The company has described the Snapdragon XR2 as the world’s first 5G XR platform, which means it’s going to involve all the usual buzzwords people have been talking about recently. So not only does the XR2 come with a 5G connectivity option, it also has a bunch of AI stuff coming with it too.
The whole thing is being powered by a platform Qualcomm promises to be better than the exiting XR1 chip (obviously). That means 2x the CPU and GPU performance, 4x more video bandwidth, 6x higher resolution, and an 11x improvement on AI performance. Because AI is in and hip now, and 5G’s improvements are supposed to be offering a boost to AI processing capabilities.
The XR2 can also support displays that offer up to 3K resolution per eye at 90FPS, up to seven concurrent cameras to ‘hyper-accurate’ and real time body tracking, automatic room mapping, holographic ‘telepresence’, and the usual AR stuff of displaying virtual screens and objects in front of your eyes. It also supports 8K/60FPS videos in 360 degrees, 120Hz refresh rates, and both HDR10 and HDR10+. All of that is helped with a custom kind of silicon that it supposed to reduce latency.
Oh and obviously there’s 3D spatial sound, as there should be, and that automatic mapping means you can scan your environment and turn it into a totally different virtual space using mixed reality technology
There’s no word on what sort of devices will arrive with the XR2 chip, but they should start arriving from next year.
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.