Arm and Qualcomm’s dispute over Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips is continuing in court this week, with executives from each company taking the stand and attempting to downplay the accusations from the other side.
If you haven’t been following along, the crux of the issue is Qualcomm’s purchase of a chip design firm called Nuvia in 2021. Nuvia was originally founded by ex-Apple chip designers to create high-performance Arm chips for servers, but Qualcomm took an interest in Nuvia’s work and acquired the company to help it create high-end Snapdragon processors for consumer PCs instead. Arm claims that this was a violation of its licensing agreements with Nuvia and is seeking to have all chips based on Nuvia technology destroyed.
According to Reuters, Arm CEO Rene Haas testified this week that the Nuvia acquisition is depriving Arm of about $50 million a year, on top of the roughly $300 million a year in fees that Qualcomm already pays Arm to use its instruction set and some elements of its chip designs. This is because Qualcomm pays Arm lower royalty rates than Nuvia had agreed to pay when it was still an independent company.
For its part, Qualcomm argued that Arm was mainly trying to push Qualcomm out of the PC market because Arm had its own plans to create high-end PC chips, though Haas claimed that Arm was merely exploring possible future options. Nuvia founder and current Qualcomm Senior VP of Engineering Gerard Williams III also testified that Arm’s technology comprises “one percent or less” of Qualcomm’s finished chip designs, minimizing Arm’s contributions to Snapdragon chips.
Although testimony is ongoing, Reuters reports that a jury verdict in the trial “could come as soon as this week.”
If it succeeds, Arm could potentially halt sales of all Snapdragon chips with Nuvia’s technology in them, which at this point includes both the Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips for Windows PCs and the Snapdragon 8 Elite chips that Qualcomm recently introduced for high-end Android phones.
Any company that makes Arm chips must license technology from Arm Holdings plc, the British company that develops the instruction set. Companies can license the instruction set and create their own CPU designs or license one of Arm’s ready-made Cortex CPU core designs to incorporate into their own chips.
Bloomberg reports that Arm is canceling Qualcomm’s license, an escalation of a fight that began in late 2022 when Arm sued Qualcomm over its acquisition of Nuvia in 2021. Arm has given Qualcomm 60 days’ notice of the cancellation, giving the companies two months to come to some kind of agreement before Qualcomm is forced to stop manufacturing and selling its Arm chips.
A Qualcomm spokesperson told Bloomberg that Arm Holdings plc was attempting to “strong-arm a longtime partner” and that Qualcomm was “confident that Qualcomm’s rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed.”
Qualcomm bought Nuvia to assist with developing high-performance Arm chips that could compete with x86 chips from Intel and AMD as well as Apple Silicon chips in iPhones and Macs—Nuvia was founded by people who had headed up Apple’s chip design team for years. Arm claimed that the acquisition “caused Nuvia to breach its Arm licenses,” and Arm demanded that Qualcomm and Nuvia destroy any designs that Nuvia had created pre-acquisition.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is the follow-up to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3—yet another change to the naming convention that Qualcomm uses for its high-end phone chips, though, as usual, the number 8 is still involved. The 8 Elite uses a “brand-new, 2nd-generation Qualcomm Oryon CPU” with clock speeds up to 4.32 GHz, which Qualcomm says will improve performance by about 45 percent compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
Rather than a mix of large, medium, and small CPU cores as it has used in the past, the 8 Elite has two “Prime” cores for hitting that high peak clock speed, while the other six are all “Performance” cores that peak at a lower 3.53 GHz. But it doesn’t look like Qualcomm is using a mix of different CPU architectures anymore, choosing to distinguish the higher-performing core from the lower-performing ones by clock speed alone.
Qualcomm promises a similar 40 percent performance boost from the new Adreno 830 GPU. The chip also includes a marginally improved Snapdragon X80 5G modem, up from an X75 modem in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3—its main improvement appears to be support for additional antennas, for a total of six, but the download speed still tops out at a theoretical 10Gbps. Wi-Fi 7 support appears to be the same as in the 8 Gen 3, but the 8 Elite does support the Bluetooth 6.0 standard, up from Bluetooth 5.4 in the 8 Gen 3.
In April, TSMC was provided with $6.6 billion in direct CHIPS Act funding to “support TSMC’s investment of more than $65 billion in three greenfield leading-edge fabs in Phoenix, Arizona, which will manufacture the world’s most advanced semiconductors,” the Department of Commerce said.
These investments are key to the Biden-Harris administration’s mission of strengthening “economic and national security by providing a reliable domestic supply of the chips that will underpin the future economy, powering the AI boom and other fast-growing industries like consumer electronics, automotive, Internet of Things, and high-performance computing,” the department noted. And in particular, the funding will help America “maintain our competitive edge” in artificial intelligence, the department said.
It likely wouldn’t make sense to prop TSMC up to help the US “onshore the critical hardware manufacturing capabilities that underpin AI’s deep language learning algorithms and inferencing techniques,” to then limit access to US-made tech. TSMC’s Arizona fabs are supposed to support companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm and enable them to “compete effectively,” the Department of Commerce said.
Currently, it’s unclear where the US probe into TSMC will go or whether a damaging finding could potentially impact TSMC’s CHIPS funding.
Last fall, the Department of Commerce published a final rule, though, designed to “prevent CHIPS funds from being used to directly or indirectly benefit foreign countries of concern,” such as China.
If the US suspected that TSMC was aiding Huawei’s AI chip manufacturing, the company could be perceived as avoiding CHIPS guardrails prohibiting TSMC from “knowingly engaging in any joint research or technology licensing effort with a foreign entity of concern that relates to a technology or product that raises national security concerns.”
Violating this “technology clawback” provision of the final rule risks “the full amount” of CHIPS Act funding being “recovered” by the Department of Commerce. That outcome seems unlikely, though, given that TSMC has been awarded more funding than any other recipient apart from Intel.
The Department of Commerce declined Ars’ request to comment on whether TSMC’s CHIPS Act funding could be impacted by their reported probe.
Enlarge/ Microsoft’s Arm-powered Surface Laptop 7. We’re still waiting for Arm chips to make their way into cheaper PCs.
Andrew Cunningham
For the first time in the decade-plus that Microsoft has been trying to make Arm-powered Windows PCs happen, we’ve finally got some pretty good ones. The latest Surface Pro and Surface Laptop (and the other Copilot+ PCs) benefit from extensive work done to Windows 11’s x86 translation layer, a wider selection of native apps, and most importantly, Snapdragon X Pro and X Elite chips from Qualcomm that are as good as or better than Intel’s or AMD’s current offerings.
The main problem with these computers is that they’re all on the expensive side. The cheapest Snapdragon X PC right now is probably this $899 developer kit mini-desktop; the cheapest laptops start around the same $1,000 price as the entry-level MacBook Air.
That’s a problem Qualcomm hopes to correct next year. Qualcomm CEO Christiano Amon said on the company’s Q3 earnings call (as recorded by The Verge) that the company was hoping to bring Arm PC prices down to $700 at some point in 2025, noting that these cheaper PCs wouldn’t compromise the performance of the Snapdragon X series’ built-in neural processing unit (NPU).
That Amon singled out the NPU is interesting because it leaves the door open to further reductions in CPU and GPU performance to make cheaper products that can hit those lower prices. The Snapdragon X Plus series keeps the exact same NPU as the X Elite, for example, but comes with fewer CPU and GPU cores that are clocked lower than the Snapdragon X Elite chips.
Qualcomm may want to keep NPU performance the same because Microsoft has a minimum NPU performance requirement of 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) to qualify for its Copilot+ PC label and associated features in Windows 11. Other requirements include 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage, but Microsoft specifically hasn’t made specific CPU or GPU performance recommendations for the Copilot+ program beyond the basic ones necessary for running Windows 11 in the first place. Copilot+ PCs come with additional AI-powered features that take advantage of local processing power rather than sending requests to the cloud, though as of this writing, there aren’t many of these features, and one of the biggest ones (Recall) has been delayed indefinitely because of privacy and security concerns.
Lofty goals for Arm PCs
Both Arm and Qualcomm have made lofty claims about their goals in the PC market. Arm CEO Rene Haas says Arm chips could account for more than half of all Windows PC shipments in the next five years, and Amon has said that PC OEMs expect as much as 60 percent of their systems to ship with Arm chips in the next three years.
These claims seem overly optimistic; Intel and AMD aren’t going anywhere and aren’t standing still, and despite improvements to Windows-on-Arm, the PC ecosystem still has decades invested in x86 chips. But if either company is ever going to get anywhere close to those numbers, fielding decent systems at more mass-market prices will be key to achieving that kind of volume.
Hopefully, the cheaper Snapdragon systems will be available both as regular laptops and as mini desktops, like Qualcomm’s dev kit desktop. To succeed, the Arm Windows ecosystem will need to mirror what is available in both the x86 PC ecosystem and Apple’s Mac lineup to capture as many buyers as possible.
And the more Arm PCs there are out there, the more incentive developers will have to continue fixing Windows-on-Arm’s last lingering compatibility problems. Third-party drivers for things like printers, mice, audio preamps and mixers, and other accessories are the biggest issue right now since there’s no way to translate the x86 versions. The only way to support this hardware will be with more Arm-native software, and the only way to get more Arm-native software is to make it worth developers’ time to write it.
Enlarge/ Microsoft’s 11th-edition Surface Pro, as exploded by iFixit. Despite adhesive holding in the screen and the fact that you need to remove the heatsink to get at the battery, it’s still much more repairable than past Surfaces or competing tablets.
For a long time, Microsoft’s Surface hardware was difficult-to-impossible to open and repair, and devices as recent as 2019’s Surface Pro 7 still managed a repairability score of just 1 out of 10 on iFixit’s scale. 2017’s original Surface Laptop needed to be physically sliced apart to access its internals, making it essentially impossible to try to fix the machine without destroying it.
Now, iFixit has torn apart the most recent Snapdragon X-powered Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices and has mostly high praise for both devices in its preliminary teardown video. Both devices earn an 8 out of 10 on iFixit’s repairability scale, thanks to Microsoft’s first-party service manuals, the relative ease with which both devices can be opened, and clearly labeled internal components.
Beneath the Surface
To open the Surface Laptop, iFixit says you only need to undo four screws, hidden beneath the laptop’s rubber feet; at that point, the bottom of the machine is only attached by magnets, rather than breakable retention clips. Opening the bottom of the laptop provides easy access to the battery and an M.2 2232 SSD. Labels inside the device indicate which screws need to be removed to replace which parts, and what kind of screwdriver you’ll need to do the job; scannable barcodes also make it easier to find repair manuals and parts on Microsoft’s site. Most other parts are easy to remove and replace once the bottom of the laptop is off.
The Surface Pro’s best repairability feature remains its easily accessible M.2 2232 SSD, present under a pop-off cover on the back of the tablet. From there, things get more difficult—accessing the battery and other components requires removing the screen, which is still held in place with adhesive rather than screws or magnets. This adhesive needs to be removed—iFixit cut it away with a thin plastic tool, and closing the tablet back up securely would likely require new adhesive to be applied. Once inside, the parts and screws are still labeled clearly, but you do need to remove the entire heatsink before you can replace the battery.
iFixit uses slightly different criteria for evaluating the repairability of laptops and tablets since tablets are more tightly integrated devices. So despite the identical repairability scores, the Surface Pro remains slightly more difficult to open and fix than the laptop; iFixit is just comparing it to devices like the iPad Air and Pro rather than other PC laptops, and the Surface Pro still looks better than other tablets by comparison despite the use of adhesive.
The teardown video didn’t detail exactly why iFixit knocked points off of each device’s repairability score, though iFixit took note of the soldered-down non-upgradeable RAM and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth modules. Both devices also use way more screws and clips than something like the Framework Laptop, which could also be a factor.
We’ve been using the new Snapdragon-powered Surface devices for a few days now, and we’ll have more thoughts to share about the hardware and its performance in the coming days.
Enlarge/ AMD’s Ryzen 9 AI 300 series is a new chip and a new naming scheme.
AMD
Less than two years ago, AMD announced that it was overhauling its numbering scheme for laptop processors. Each digit in its four-digit CPU model numbers picked up a new meaning, which, with the help of a detailed reference sheet, promised to inform buyers of exactly what it was they were buying.
One potential issue with this, as we pointed out at the time, was that this allowed AMD to change over the first and most important of those four digits every single year that it decided to re-release a processor, regardless of whether that chip actually included substantive improvements or not. Thus a “Ryzen 7730U” from 2023 would look two generations newer than a Ryzen 5800U from 2021, despite being essentially identical.
AMD is partially correcting this today by abandoning the self-described “decoder ring” naming system and resetting it to something more conventional.
For its new Ryzen AI laptop processors, codenamed “Strix Point,” AMD is still using the same broad Ryzen 3/5/7/9 number to communicate general performance level plus a one- or two-letter suffix to denote general performance and power level (U for ultraportables, HX for higher-performance chips, and so on). A new three-digit processor number will inform buyers of the chip’s generation in the first digit and denote the specific SKU using the last two digits.
Enlarge/ AMD is changing how it numbers its laptop CPUs again.
AMD
In other words, the company is essentially hitting the undo button.
Like Intel, AMD is shifting from four-digit numbers to three digits. The Strix Point processor numbers will start with the 300 series, which AMD says is because this is the third generation of Ryzen laptop processors with a neural processing unit (NPU) included. Current 7040-series and 8040-series processors with NPUs are not being renamed retroactively, and AMD plans to stop using the 7000- and 8000-series numbering for processor introductions going forward.
AMD wouldn’t describe exactly how it would approach CPU model numbers for new products that used older architectures but did say that new processors that didn’t meet the 40+ TOPS requirement for Microsoft’s Copilot+ program would simply use the “Ryzen” name instead of the new “Ryzen AI” branding. That would include older architectures with slower NPUs, like the current 7040 and 8040-series chips.
Desktop CPUs are, once again, totally unaffected by this change. Desktop processors’ four-digit model numbers and alphabetic suffixes generally tell you all you need to know about their underlying architecture; the new Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs and the Zen 5 architecture were also announced today.
It seems like a lot of work to do to end up basically where we started, especially when the people at AMD who make and market the desktop chips have been getting by just fine with older model numbers for newly released products when appropriate. But to be fair to AMD, there just isn’t a great way to do processor model numbers in a simple and consistent way, at least not given current market realities:
PC OEMs that seem to demand or expect “new” product from chipmakers every year, even though chip companies tend to take somewhere between one and three years to release significantly updated designs.
The fact that casual and low-end users don’t actually benefit a ton from performance enhancements, keeping older chips viable for longer.
Different subsections of the market that must be filled with slightly different chips (consider chips with vPro versus similar chips without it).
The need to “bin” chips—that is, disable small parts of a given silicon CPU or GPU die and then sell the results as a lower-end product—to recoup manufacturing costs and minimize waste.
Apple may come the closest to what the “ideal” would probably be—one number for the overarching chip generation (M1, M3, etc.), one word like “Pro” or “Max” to communicate the general performance level, and a straightforward description of the number of CPU and GPU cores included, to leave flexibility for binning chips. But as usual, Apple occupies a unique position: it’s the only company putting its own processors into its own systems, and the company usually only updates a product when there’s something new to put in it, rather than reflexively announcing new models every time another CES or back-to-school season or Windows version rolls around.
In reverting to more traditional model numbers, AMD has at least returned to a system that people who follow CPUs will be broadly familiar with. It’s not perfect, and it leaves plenty of room for ambiguity as the product lineup gets more complicated. But it’s in the same vein as Intel’s rebranding of 13th-gen Core chips, the whole “Intel Processor” thing, or Qualcomm’s unfriendly eight-digit model numbers for its Snapdragon X Plus and Elite chips. AMD’s new nomenclature is a devil, but at least it’s one we know.
Enlarge/ The Qualcomm Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows fits a Snapdragon X Elite and 32GB of RAM into an $899 mini desktop.
Qualcomm
Microsoft and Qualcomm are both making a concerted effort to make Windows-on-Arm happen after years of slow progress and false starts. One thing the companies have done to get software developers on board is to offer mini PC developer kits, which can be connected to a software developer’s normal multi-monitor setup and doesn’t require the same cash outlay as an equivalently specced Surface tablet or laptop.
Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows, a small black plastic mini PC with the same internal hardware as the new wave of Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite processors in them. The box is fairly generously specced, with a slightly faster-than-normal version of the Snapdragon X Elite that can boost up to 4.3 GHz, 32GB of RAM, and a 512GB NVMe SSD.
Unlike the Windows Dev Kit 2023, which appeared to be a repurposed Surface Pro 9 motherboard thrown into a black plastic box, the Snapdragon Dev Kit appears to be purpose-built. It has a single USB-C port on the front and two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, two USB-A ports, a headphone/speaker jack, and an Ethernet port in the back. This isn’t an overwhelming complement of ports, but it’s in line with what Apple offers in the Mac mini.
Perhaps most importantly for developers hoping to play with Microsoft’s new wave of AI-accelerated features and development tools, the Snapdragon Dev Kit includes the same NPU as all the Copilot+ devices announced yesterday. Qualcomm says the NPU is capable of 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS), a bit above the 40 TOPS that Microsoft has defined as the floor for Copilot+ PCs; this requirement means that no current-generation Intel and AMD laptops and desktops qualify for the label. x86 processors with more capable NPUs should arrive sometime this fall.
Enlarge/ The back of the box has two more USB-C ports, plus USB-A, HDMI, Ethernet, and audio. There’s a dedicated power jack, so you probably won’t be able to power this from a USB-C charger or monitor.
Qualcomm
The bad news is that this kit will run you $899, $300 more than the Windows Dev Kit 2023 (which was released in 2022). It’s also $680 more than the old Snapdragon 7c-based ECS LIVA QC710, the first Arm developer box that Microsoft offered. Though that model was dramatically under-specced, it does seem like there’s room to offer a cheaper box (maybe with a Snapdragon X Plus and 16GB of RAM) to developers or users who still want to experiment with a Copilot+-capable system but don’t want to drop nearly $1,000 on a desktop.
Given that a Surface Laptop with a Snapdragon X Elite chip and 32GB of RAM will run you at least $2,000, the Snapdragon Dev Kit is still a better deal if you plan to use it primarily as a testbed or a general-purpose desktop. You can sign up to preorder the box now, and it begins shipping on June 18.
Enlarge/ Huawei’s Intel-powered Matebook X Pro has drawn criticism from US China hawks.
Huawei
The US crackdown on exports to Huawei now includes even stronger restrictions than the company has already faced. The Financial Times reports that Intel and Qualcomm have had their Huawei export licenses revoked, so Huawei will no longer be able to buy chips from either company.
The export ban has been around since 2020 and means that any company wishing to ship parts to Huawei must get approval from the government on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes these come with restrictions, like Qualcomm’s license, which allowed it to ship smartphone chips to Huawei, but not “5G” chips. That led to Qualcomm creating special 4G-only versions of its 5G chips for Huawei, and the company ended up with 4G-only Snapdragon 888 phones in 2021.
Since then, Huawei has been working on its own Arm chips from its chip design division, HiSilicon. In April, the Huawei Pura 70 smartphone launched with an in-house HiSilicon Kirin 9010 SoC made at SMIC, a Chinese chip fab that is also facing export restrictions. With what is probably still a 7 nm manufacturing process, it’s more of a 2020 chip than a 2024 chip, but that’s still fast enough for many use cases.
Assuming HiSilicon can make enough smartphone chips, the loss of Qualcomm chips isn’t a huge deal right now. Qualcomm seemed to know Huawei has moved beyond it, too, saying in a recent SEC filing, “We do not expect to receive product revenues from Huawei beyond the current calendar year.” Huawei is roaring back to life in the Chinese smartphone market, thanks to HiSilicon chips and preferences for locally made goods.
Huawei’s new laptop looks thin, light, and premium.
Huawei
Intel is going to be a bigger problem and was probably the reason for this latest export change. Intel has controversially had a license to ship Huawei laptop chips since 2020, so Huawei’s laptop business hasn’t been hurting much. Just in April, the 2024 Huawei Matebook X Pro launched with Intel’s latest “Meteor Lake” Core Ultra 9 Processor. It looks like a top-tier laptop, with a 14-inch,120 Hz OLED display, fingerprint reader, all the latest Wi-Fi connectivity, Windows 11 (Microsoft also has approval), and an aluminum body. Thanks to the Intel chip, it also has much-hyped “on-board AI processing.”
Shortly after launch, Reuters reported that Republican lawmakers were unhappy about Intel’s involvement with Huawei’s premium laptop, particularly because of its ability to enable nebulous “AI” features. The US recently passed new restrictions on shipping AI chips to China, but that was around more serious Nvidia AI server chips like the H200, which powers most of the generative AI industry. The hype around AI also means most consumer gear comes with some kind of “AI” marketing angle nowadays, and apparently that was enough to send lawmakers back to the drawing board.
If it feels like you’ve heard of a thousand Huawei export ban expansions that don’t seem very effective, you’re not alone. That Reuters report quotes Congressman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) with the same feeling: “These approvals must stop. Two years ago, I was told licenses to Huawei would stop. Today, it doesn’t seem as though the policy has changed.” The policy has changed, like when new licenses stopped being issued in 2023, but that apparently didn’t involve revoking existing licenses. Profit-first US companies are fighting these bans every step of the way, since a Huawei contract can represent millions of dollars. Huawei can also see all of this coming and is doing its best to adjust.
Assuming this latest restriction finally does the trick, with no Intel chips, Huawei’s laptop business will surely suffer once it runs out of its current stockpile. With ARM laptops becoming more and more popular, though, maybe the next step for Huawei’s laptop division is a HiSilicon laptop. Such a laptop would probably be very slow, but it would be better than nothing.
Microsoft, Qualcomm and Magic Leap announced a partnership to “guide the evolution” of the Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK), a cross-platform AR/VR development framework which has now gone open-source.
MRTK was a Microsoft-driven project that provided a set of components and features used to accelerate cross-platform XR app development in the Unity game engine. The developing team behind MRTK was unfortunately disbanded, as Microsoft cut both MRTK and the AltspaceVR teams earlier this year in a wide-reaching round of layoffs.
Still, as an open-source project now, Microsoft is joining XR industry cohorts Qualcomm and Magic Leap to form their own independent organization within GitHub that aspires to transform the software into a “true multi-platform toolkit that enables greater third-party collaboration.”
“With Magic Leap joining Microsoft as equal stakeholders on the MRTK steering committee, we hope to enrich the current ecosystem and help our developer community create richer, more immersive experiences that span platforms,” Magic Leap says in a blogpost. “Additionally, our support for MRTK3 will allow for simple porting of MRTK3 apps from other OpenXR devices to our platform.”
MRTK3 already supports a wide range of platforms, either full or experimentally, including OpenXR devices like Microsoft HoloLens 2, Meta Quest, Windows Mixed Reality, SteamVR, Oculus Rift (on OpenXR), Lenovo ThinkReality A3, as well as Windows Traditional desktop. The committee says more devices are “coming soon,” one of which will likely be the Magic Leap 2 AR headset.
Meanwhile, Microsoft announced MRTK3 is on track to reach general availability to developers on the second week of September 2023. To learn more, check out Microsoft’s MRTK3 hub, which includes support info, tutorials, and more.
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It’s clear that we’re undergoing another massive shift on how we connect, play, work and interact with the world around us. More specifically, a shift on the devices we use every day.
Mixed reality (MR) is taking the world by storm and headworn devices are quickly winning the hearts (and habits) of consumers. Extended Reality (XR) devices are getting lighter, sleeker, and more performant providing unprecedented immersive experiences. New players in the market means a boost for the industry and more options for developers looking to create the next generation of AR, VR and MR apps and experiences.
A New Wave of MR Devices and Experiences
At AWE 2023 (Augmented World Expo), Qualcomm announced that Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform now supports the new generation of MR devices, including Lenovo’s ThinkReality VRX, Oppo’s new MR Glass Developer Edition, all-in-one AR devices from DigiLens, TCL RayNeo, and other prominent headworn devices expected to be released later this year. Powered by Snapdragon chipsets purposefully built for XR, these devices are a game changer for developers looking to combine computer vision, AI, and 5G capabilities to build immersive and ultra-realistic experiences.
By expanding the perception technology stack from AR to MR, Snapdragon Spaces enables more developers to push the boundaries of reality, all thanks to the video passthrough capabilities combined with features that seamlessly understand environments and users.
With the wide variety of devices available and soon to be available in the market, developers can reap the benefits from working with a platform that is based on OpenXR. Snapdragon Spaces enables developers to easily deploy applications across multiple devices while being part of an open and rapidly growing ecosystem.
Strong Momentum for XR Developers
Developers are in the driver’s seat leading, disrupting and creating this new era of spatial computing.
Hugo Swart, VP and GM of XR, highlighted the incredible traction the Snapdragon Spaces ecosystem is getting: thousands of developers have joined the Snapdragon Spaces community, more than 80 members have joined Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder Program, three new Metaverse Fund venture investments and an inaugural group of 10 companies joining the Niantic Lightship and Snapdragon Spaces developer initiative.
The platform has been a critical building block for developers across productivity, gaming and entertainment, health, education, training and other verticals to deliver innovative apps based on the world’s most popular development engines: Unity and Unreal.
Get Started with Snapdragon Spaces
The XR market is about to experience a huge influx of content, applications, new devices and increased adoption.
Snapdragon Spaces continues to expand and create an open ecosystem that enables developers to pioneer innovative experiences for the next generation of immersive technology. For developers who want to help build this new era of spatial computing, check out Snapdragon Spaces.
AWE USA 2023 saw a blossoming industry defending itself from negative press and a perceived rivalry with other emerging technologies. Fortunately, Day One also brought big announcements, great discussions, and a little help from AI itself.
Ori Inbar’s Welcome Address
Historically, AWE has started with an address from founder Ori Inbar. This time, it started with an address from a hologram of Ori Inbar appearing on an ARHT display.
Ori Inbar hologram
The hologram waxed on for a few minutes about progress in the industry and XR’s incredible journey. Then the human Ori Inbar appeared and told the audience that everything that the hologram said was written by ChatGPT.
While (the real) Inbar quipped that he uses artificial intelligence to show him how not to talk, he addressed recent media claims that AI is taking attention and funding away from XR. He has a different view.
it’s ON !!!
Ori Inbar just started his opening key note at #AWE2023
“We industry insiders know this is not exactly true … AI is a good thing for XR. AI accelerates XR,” said Inbar. “XR is the interface for AI … our interactions [with AI] will become a lot less about text and prompts and a lot more about spatial context.”
“Metaverse, Shmetaverse” Returns With a Very Special Guest
Inbar has always been bullish on XR. He has been skeptical of the metaverse.
At the end of his welcome address last year, Inbar praised himself for not saying “the M word” a single time. The year before that, he opened the conference with a joke game show called “Metaverse, Shmetaverse.” Attendees this year were curious to see Inbar share the stage with a special guest: Neal Stephenson.
Neal Stephenson
Stephenson’s 1992 book, Snow Crash, introduced the world to the word “metaverse” – though Stephenson said that he wasn’t the first one to imagine the concept. He also addressed the common concern that the term for shared virtual spaces came from a dystopian novel.
“The metaverse described in Snow Crash was my best guess about what spatial computing as a mass medium might look like,” said Stephenson. “The metaverse itself is neither dystopian nor utopian.”
Stephenson then commented that the last five years or so have seen the emergence of the core technologies necessary to create the metaverse, though it still suffers from a lack of compelling content. That’s something that his company, Lamina1, hopes to address through a blockchain-based system for rewarding creators.
“There have to be experiences in the metaverse that are worth having,” said Stephenson. “For me, there’s a kind of glaring and frustrating lack of support for the people who make those experiences.”
AWE 2023 Keynotes and Follow-Ups
Both Day One and Day Two of AWE start out with blocks of keynotes on the main stage. On Day One, following Inbar’s welcome address and conversation with Stephenson, we heard from Qualcomm and XREAL (formerly Nreal). Both talks kicked off themes that would be taken up in other sessions throughout the day.
Qualcomm
From the main stage, Qualcomm Vice President and General Manager of XR, Hugo Swart, presented “Accelerating the XR Ecosystem: The Future Is Open.” He commented on the challenge of developing AR headsets, but mentioned the half-dozen or so Qualcomm-enabled headsets released in the last year, including the Lenovo ThinkReality VRX announced Tuesday.
Hugo Swart
Swart was joined on the stage by OPPO Director of XR Technology, Yi Xu, who announced a new Qualcomm-powered MR headset that would become available as a developer edition in the second half of this year.
As exciting as those announcements were, it was a software announcement that really made a stir. It’s a new Snapdragon Spaces tool called “Dual Render Fusion.”
“We have been working very hard to reimagine smartphone XR when used with AR glasses,” said Swart. “The idea is that mobile developers designing apps for 2D expand those apps to world-scale apps without any knowledge of XR.”
Keeping the Conversation Going
Another talk, “XR’s Inflection Point” presented by Qualcomm Director of Product Management Steve Lukas, provided a deeper dive into Dual Render Fusion. The tool allows an experience to use a mobile phone camera and a headworn device’s camera simultaneously. Existing app development tools hadn’t allowed this because (until now) it didn’t make sense.
Steve Lukas
“To increase XR’s adoption curve, we must first flatten its learning curve, and that’s what Qualcomm just did,” said Lukas. “We’re not ready to give up on mobile phones so why don’t we stop talking about how to replace them and start talking about how to leverage them?”
A panel discussion, “Creating a New Reality With Snapdragon Today” moderated by Qualcomm Senior Director of Product Management XR Said Bakadir, brought together Xu, Lenovo General Manager of XR and Metaverse Vishal Shah, and DigiLens Vice President of Sales and Marketing Brian Hamilton. They largely addressed the need to rethink AR content and delivery.
From left to right: Vishal Shah, Brian Hamilton, Yi Xu, and Said Bakadir
“When I talk to the developers, they say, ‘Well there’s no hardware.’ When I talk to the hardware guys, they say, ‘There’s no content.’ And we’re kind of stuck in that space,” said Bakadir.
Hamilton and Shah both said, in their own words, that Qualcomm is creating “an all-in-one platform” and “an end-to-end solution” that solves the content/delivery dilemma that Bakadir opened with.
XREAL
In case you blinked and missed it, Nreal is now XREAL. According to a release shared with ARPost, the name change had to do with “disputes regarding the Nreal mark” (probably how similar it was to “Unreal”). But, “the disputes were solved amicably.”
Chi Xu
The only change is the name – the hardware and software are still the hardware and software that we know and love. So, when CEO Chi Xu took the stage to present “Unleashing the Potential of Consumer AR” he just focused on progress.
From one angle, that progress looks like a version of XREAL’s AR operating system for Steam Deck, which Xu said is “coming soon.” From another angle, it looked like the partnership with Sightful which recently resulted in “Spacetop” – the world’s first AR laptop.
XREAL also announced Beam, a controller and compute box that can connect wirelessly or via hard connection to XREAL glasses specifically for streaming media. Beam also allows comfort and usability settings for the virtual screen that aren’t currently supported by the company’s current console and app integrations. Xu called it “the best TV innovation since TV.”
AI and XR
A number of panels and talks also picked up on Inbar’s theme of AI and XR. And they all (as far as I saw) unanimously agreed with Inbar’s assessment that there is no actual competition between the two technologies.
The most in-depth discussion on the topic was “The Intersection of AI and XR” a panel discussion between XR ethicist Kent Bye, Lamina1 CPO Tony Parisi, HTC Global VP of Corporate Development Alvin Graylin, and moderated by WXR Fund Managing Partner Amy LaMeyer.
From left to right: Amy LaMeyer, Tony Parisi, Alvin Graylin, Kent Bye
“There’s this myth that AI is here so now XR’s dead, but it’s the complete opposite,” said Graylin. Graylin pointed out that most forms of tracking and input as well as approaches to scene understanding are all driven by AI. “AI has been part of XR for a long time.”
While they all agreed that AI is a part of XR, the group disagreed on the extent to which AI could take over content creation.
“A lot of people think AI is the solution to all of their content creation and authoring needs in XR, but that’s not the whole equation,” said Parisi.
Graylin countered that AI will increasingly be able to replace human developers. Bye in particular was vocal that we should be reluctant and suspicious of handing over too much creative power to AI in the first place.
“The differentiating factor is going to be storytelling,” said Bye. “I’m seeing a lot of XR theater that has live actors doing things that AI could never do.”
Web3, WebXR, and the Metaverse
The conversation is still continuing regarding the relationship between the metaverse and Web3. With both the metaverse and Web3 focusing on the ideas of openness and interoperability, WebXR has become a common ground between the two. WebXR is also the most accessible from a hardware perspective.
“VR headsets will remain a niche tech like game consoles: some people will have them and use them and swear by them and won’t be able to live without them, but not everyone will have one,”Nokia Head of Trends and Innovation Scouting, Leslie Shannon, said in her talk “What Problem Does the Metaverse Solve?”
Leslie Shannon
“The majority of metaverse experiences are happening on mobile phones,” said Shannon. “Presence is more important than immersion.”
Wonderland Engine CEO Jonathan Hale asked “Will WebXR Replace Native XR” with The Fitness Resort COO Lydia Berry. Berry commented that the availability of WebXR across devices helps developers make their content accessible as well as discoverable.
Lydia Berry and Jonathan Hale
“The adoption challenges around glasses are there. We’re still in the really early adoption phase,” said Berry. “We need as many headsets out there as possible.”
Hale also added that WebXR is being taken more seriously as a delivery method by hardware manufacturers who were previously mainly interested in pursuing native apps.
“More and more interest is coming from hardware manufacturers every day,” said Hale. “We just announced that we’re working with Qualcomm to bring Wonderland Engine to Snapdragon Spaces.”
Keep Coming Back
AWE Day One was a riot but there’s a lot more where that came from. Day Two kicks off with keynotes by Magic Leap and Niantic, there are more talks, more panels, more AI, and the Expo Floor opens up for demos. We’ll see you tomorrow.
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