Editor
Jennifer chevron_right
Qualcomm is pushing the boundaries of innovation once again, announcing multiple advancements across mobile, automotive, and edge AI at the Snapdragon Summit 2024, launching the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform and new automotive solutions.
Qualcomm’s latest launches aim to bring smarter, faster, and more efficient tech experiences to users worldwide. Let’s dive into what these new developments mean for our devices and vehicles.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform: AI at the Core
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform is set to redefine smartphone experiences with its combination of speed, efficiency, and advanced AI features. It’s Qualcomm’s fastest and most powerful mobile chip yet, featuring the second-generation Qualcomm Oryon CPU, designed to handle high-performance tasks more smoothly than ever.
Beyond sheer speed, the Snapdragon 8 Elite emphasizes robust on-device AI capabilities, ensuring more responsive interactions across tasks like voice recognition, image analysis, and context-based understanding.
Qualcomm has also enhanced its Adreno GPU, aiming to elevate gaming visuals and multimedia streaming to a new level of clarity and responsiveness. Notably, the platform incorporates Qualcomm’s most advanced AI-ISP, which brings improvements to smartphone photography by applying AI enhancements in real-time.
This platform promises to deliver personalized, privacy-focused, generative AI experiences directly on devices. Leading brands like ASUS, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO, RealMe, Samsung, Vivo, and Xiaomi are set to roll out devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, making it easier for users to access cutting-edge features across a range of smartphone
Generative AI Takes the Wheel: Snapdragon Cockpit Elite & Ride Elite
Qualcomm is extending their ambition well beyond the realm of smartphones, as evident from its latest partnership with Google to advance digital transformation in the automotive industry. This multi-year collaboration aims to bring generative AI-enabled digital cockpits to cars, building on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis and Google’s Android Automotive OS.
By integrating Google Cloud’s AI capabilities with Snapdragon’s hardware, this partnership hopes to create more intuitive, connected in-car experiences. The focus is on enhancing real-time voice assistance, improving driver monitoring systems, and enabling a more immersive infotainment experience.
The collaboration aims to support software-defined vehicles (SDVs), allowing automakers to push software updates and new features over time, thus ensuring cars remain up-to-date with the latest advancements. Qualcomm will lead the market push for this joint solution, with the goal of empowering automakers to innovate faster while delivering safer and more connected in-car experiences.
In this vein, Qualcomm has introduced two new platforms—the Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite—which focus on significantly improving vehicle performance and safety. These platforms incorporate Qualcomm’s Oryon CPU, tailored specifically for automotive needs, and deliver up to three times faster CPU performance and up to 12 times better AI performance than previous generations.
These advancements allow real-time decision-making, adaptive responses, and seamless processing of data from up to 40 sensors, including as many as 20 high-resolution cameras for complete cabin and external monitoring.
Qualcomm’s new platforms are built on a flexible architecture, which supports various software virtualization features. This allows multiple applications to run simultaneously without lag, whether for safety monitoring, infotainment, or automated driving features. The enhanced GPU also delivers more realistic graphics, addressing the growing demand for in-car gaming, media streaming, and dynamic driver displays.
On top of that, safety remains a top priority, with these platforms meeting the highest standards and enabling features like hands-free driving, driver monitoring, and obstacle detection. The result is a smarter, more intuitive, and adaptive vehicle environment, pushing the automotive industry closer to fully software-defined vehicles.
Qualcomm & Mistral AI: Generative AI at the Edge
In another major move, Qualcomm has teamed up with Mistral AI to integrate the Ministral 3B and Ministral 8B models into Snapdragon devices, from smartphones to cars. The collaboration introduces Mistral’s latest models, Ministral 3B and Ministral 8B, to devices across Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform, Snapdragon Cockpit Elite, and Snapdragon Ride Elite.
These new generative AI models are designed to run efficiently on-device, ensuring quicker responses, enhanced privacy, and reduced reliance on cloud processing. With Mistral’s models now optimized for Qualcomm’s hardware, the aim is to support a variety of AI-driven applications, such as virtual assistants, that can better understand user commands and needs in real-time.
Qualcomm plans to make these models accessible to developers through the Qualcomm AI Hub, enabling the creation of innovative on-device experiences for smartphones, vehicles, and other edge devices.
With the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform expected to hit the market soon, along with Qualcomm’s collaborative innovations in automotive and AI at the edge, the next wave of devices and vehicles will be smarter, faster, and more adaptive than ever. Let's look forward to the new batch of AI devices!