Soon after announcing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 flagship smartphone processor, Qualcomm announced Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 today, which is built for Augmented Reality devices. Qualcomm designed the Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 platform for thin augmented reality (AR) glasses. Compared to the company’s XR2-based reference design, there is a 2.5x improvement in AI performance. Qualcomm says they achieved a thin and lightweight design by spreading the computing load across the glasses frame.

Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 is designed for thin AR glasses

The 4nm-based AR processor includes a single CPU, Tensor AI processing, engines, and graphics for features such as visual analytics. It supports up to nine simultaneous cameras to track both a person’s body and their surroundings. The co-processor in the glasses includes an AI accelerator for tasks such as eye tracking and computer vision. Also, the third chip manages connectivity to networks and phones. Not only does this better balance the weight, but also because it’s a single chip that can do everything. Besides, there are smaller circuit boards and fewer cables to deal with.

The AR2 Gen 1 is one of the first platforms to support WiFi 7, as is Qualcomm’s new mobile processor Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. According to Qualcomm, this is important as it provides a large amount of bandwidth (up to 5.8Gbps) to connect to the phone, as well as reducing latency to less than 2ms. Qualcomm has also brought updates to its audio technology. The new S3 Gen 2 Sound and S5 Gen 2 Sound platforms bring improvements to spatial audio with head tracking, lower latency for games, and adaptive active noise cancellation. We won’t see headphones with these chips until the second half of 2023.

What is your thought about the Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 chipset? You can share with us in the comment section.