Qualcomm Powers Next-Gen Spatial Computing With XR2 Gen 2 And AR1 Gen 1 Platforms

The extended reality (XR) space continues to grow, especially after Apple’s recent validation of the market with its announcement of the Apple Vision Pro (AVP). Indeed, it’s now impossible to talk about Qualcomm’s place as an enabler in the market without talking about Apple and the AVP. Even at the most recent Apple event centered on the iPhone and Apple Watch, each product announcement tied directly back to the AVP. This should suggest how vital the XR market is seen to be by Apple and others in the industry.

That said, Qualcomm has been enabling the XR market since 2013, when the company began to pursue its XR ambitions, and it’s been doing research in this vein as far back as 2007. Qualcomm has been almost the exclusive supplier of chipsets for the mobile XR market as far back as the Snapdragon 805 in 2013, which powered the Samsung Galaxy Gear VR and ODG R7 glasses. In 2018, Qualcomm announced its first dedicated XR chip, the XR1, which was based on the Snapdragon 821. As we look at the company’s newest releases, it’s important to keep in mind just how much history Qualcomm has in such a young market segment.

XR2 Gen 2

It has been almost four years since Qualcomm made a generational upgrade to the XR2 platform, which was announced in the winter of 2019. Since then, a lot has changed within the industry, but the XR2 has become the default for standalone XR experiences, and it’s included in many high-end headsets.

Still, the XR2 Gen 1 has felt a little long in the tooth for a while, and a refresh was necessary, especially with Apple building the AVP around a multi-chip solution that leverages the M2 architecture, the latest and fastest SoC from Apple. Apple’s approach also includes a separate Apple R1 chip for handling all of the displays and sensors necessary to drive the headset, while Qualcomm’s XR2 design combines all those capabilities into a single SoC. The XR2 is a complete SoC with all the capabilities that Apple’s competitors, Qualcomm’s customers, will need to compete with the AVP. Even though Apple’s Vision Pro is a high-end product, people will still compare anything anyone releases to the AVP. With the XR2 Gen 1 and Gen 2, Qualcomm has done what Apple has not, bring together all the necessary IP to drive an XR headset into a single SoC. I believe that Apple will eventually follow in the XR2’s footsteps in its next generation headsets to save on cost, but right now its clear that the XR2 Gen 2 will offer headset OEMs a fighting chance to offer competitive products.

The XR2 Gen 2 is a world-class SoC built on 4nm process node technology that leverages the latest technological advances from Qualcomm, many of which come from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (as we’ve seen from some leaks). The GPU alone will bring a 2.5x peak performance increase compared to the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1. This, paired with variable rate shading and foveated rendering, will translate to not only considerably better image quality for all the new high-resolution XR displays, but also better battery life for devices that don’t use those displays. Qualcomm is also claiming 50% better GPU power efficiency, which could considerably improve thermals and battery life for headsets that don’t need to drive more pixels. Qualcomm says that it has optimized the XR2 Gen 2 for 3K x 3K displays, which is very high resolution—and which explains why you’d benefit from a 2.5x increase in GPU performance.

One of the most significant performance metrics that’s often overlooked in the XR space is AI, which is a shame because AI performance on an XR headset is more critical than on a smartphone or a PC. This is because so many computer vision and machine learning algorithms run on XR headsets today to enhance the user experience. Many of them must run perpetually, so AI performance is crucial to enabling them at low latency and low power. In that context, Qualcomm delivering an 8x AI performance improvement is colossal and will also enable devices to run many AI applications concurrently. This means enabling hand-tracking, voice-recognition, generative AI, simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) and eye-tracking simultaneously without the user noticing any slowdowns.

The Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 is also upping the ante on camera support from the Gen 1 by enabling up to 10 cameras or sensors, increased from seven. This requirement is likely being driven by OEMs that have maxed out on seven cameras and want to have more sensors or cameras available for things like improved environment and object detection and better hand-, eye- and face- or mouth-tracking. Qualcomm also claims that the XR2 Gen 2 delivers 12ms full-color video passthrough, which can support near-90-hertz video passthrough for mixed-reality applications.

Qualcomm says that the XR2 Gen 2 will be shipping this year, with Meta’s Quest 3 headset being the first device to ship. This reflects a continued partnership between the two companies, which have leaned on each other as the XR industry has gone through multiple up-and-down cycles. Interestingly, Qualcomm did not talk much about 5G capabilities for the XR2 Gen 2, but did mention that it will support Wi-Fi 7 when paired with a Qualcomm FastConnect 7800. The FastConnect 7800 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth platform includes a unique QuickConnect Software Suite for XR, which OEMs can implement to get extra performance and latency improvements. I believe that the market is still not ready for 5G standalone XR headsets for consumers, but there may be some enterprise applications that might put them to good use.

AR1 Gen 1

The AR1 Gen 1 comes in the wake of the AR2 Gen 1, which debuted last year as a disaggregated multi-chip solution designed for low-power, high-end AR glasses. The AR2 Gen 1 has yet to ship in any products, but Qualcomm officially says that it has products in various levels of development with OEMs including Lenovo, LG, Nreal, OPPO, Pico, QONOQ, Rokid, Sharp, TCL, Vuzix and Xiaomi. The AR1 is a much more lightweight platform than the AR2, meaning that it’s very lightweight indeed Both products are based on the 4nm process node; however, the AR1 is a single-chip solution with a cost-optimized design. Like the XR2 Gen 2, the AR1 will rely on Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800 for low-latency Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The AR1 is designed for the entry-level AR glasses market, driving no-display, single-display and dual-display glasses up to 1280 x 1280 per eye. Qualcomm has also upgraded the camera capabilities on the AR1 with a 14-bit ISP, 12MP still photos and 6MP video recording.

The AR1 Gen 1 also has built-in AI capabilities, but nowhere near what you’d see in the AR2 or XR2 platforms. The AR1 platform is for extremely lightweight AR glasses that are heavily dependent on a smartphone for compute and connectivity. From a manufacturing perspective, this product fills a gap that was previously filled by the XR1 and the Snapdragon Wear 4100, which is to say that an AR1 product was desperately needed because for too long the XR1 has been a catch-all for any products that didn’t reasonably need an XR2 for cost or performance reasons. The Snapdragon Wear 4100 is what powers the first generation of Ray-Ban Stories from Meta glasses, and the AR1 platform will—thankfully—replace it for the next generation of Ray-Ban Stories. This will hopefully improve some of my biggest gripes about those glasses, starting with the photo and video image quality. After it comes out later this year, the AR1 Gen 1 will likely find its way into other AR headsets over 2024.

Wrapping up

Considering that both of them will debut this year in Meta products, the XR2 Gen 2 and AR1 Gen 1 demonstrate the close relationship between Qualcomm and Meta in XR—a partnership that gives both companies an edge in the market. Meta gains access to the latest and greatest chip technology, while Qualcomm gains a leading-edge customer with significant volume and some of the industry's most cutting-edge applications of XR and AI.

While Qualcomm and Meta’s relationship is solid, there are still many other customers that Qualcomm enables with its chipsets., With the XR2 and AR1 enabling so many different types of headsets and customers, I expect that we will see these chips used widely across the industry. The XR2 Gen 2, I believe, will give Qualcomm’s partners a strong answer to the Apple Vision Pro in terms of device performance, enabling some of them even to release premium headsets that could potentially compete with Apple in specs if they can get their hands on competitive high-resolution displays. We do know that Samsung has partnered with Qualcomm and Google for its upcoming XR headset, and I expect that when it’s announced, it will probably sport an XR2 Gen 2 as well. A real rivalry between Samsung and Apple in XR headsets may mark a turning point for the XR space if Google doesn’t get in the way.