Qualcomm Archives - VR World

Gaming, News, Qualcomm, Virtual Reality (VR), Wearables

Oculus Go: The Smartphone-VR Hybrid We’ve Been Waiting For?

Until recently, we’ve had only two options when it came to virtual reality. One of them was the big, tethered headset good for everything from shooters and racing titles to a real-time casino games and other content aimed especially at adults, and the other was the lightweight, portable headset powered by a smartphone with all its limitations and shortcomings, but a much better price. Now Oculus, the company that re-kindled the VR revolution, has come up with something in between called the Oculus Go. While it is not perfect by any means, and it still has a lot of ground to cover before it could bring

Audio/Video, Augmented Reality (AR), Google, Hardware, News, Qualcomm, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World

Stories You Might’ve Missed: Snapdragon XR1 and Google’s new VR display

This week with Stories You Might’ve Missed, we’ll be covering the announcement of the Snapdragon XR1, as well as Google and LG’s new VR display technology. If you haven’t seen these segments before, Stories You Might’ve Missed is our dedicated segment for relevant stories that we didn’t cover this past week. Below are the stories themselves, as well as links to sources so you can read more if they caught your interest. Qualcomm introduces Snapdragon XR1, their first VR/AR-centric chipset Qualcomm’s interest in XR (Xtended Reality- blanket term for AR, VR, etc) is no secret. We’ve spoken to them directly about it before. At the

Google, Hardware, HTC, News, Qualcomm, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World

Research shows that standalone VR headsets are on the rise

Most headsets on the market today aren’t standalone VR headsets – they’re reliant on other devices in order to function. PSVR relies on a connection to a PlayStation 4 to operate, for instance, while the Vive requires a PC and the Gear VR requires a Samsung smartphone. A VR headset that can operate without being tethered to some other device is a standalone VR headset, and it turns out those are on the rise. According to a report from Business Insider Intelligence, the sales of VR headsets, in general, are expected to grow by 69% year-over-year. 30% of these headsets are expected to be standalone,

Analysis, Augmented Reality (AR), Breaking, Hardware, Mobile, News, Qualcomm, Smartphones, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World, Wearables

Qualcomm pushing mobile VR: Lighthouse-free 6DOF and exclusive Q&A

Ahead of the 2018 Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm is pulling out the big guns with the announcement of their Snapdragon 845 chipset and its VR-centric features. They’re pushing these features under the wider “Xtended Reality (XR)” umbrella, which includes AR as well. With the Snapdragon 845 reference design, Qualcomm is bringing a number of features to the table. Foveated rendering, for instance, uses eye-tracking to render what you’re not looking at in low-res to save on performance. Most interestingly, Qualcomm is also hoping to provide a full, roomscale 6DOF (six degrees of freedom) VR experience. 6DOF tracks full head-and-body movements, while 3DOF only tracks the direction

Analysis, Facebook, Google, Hardware, Oculus, Qualcomm, Virtual Reality (VR)

The most anticipated VR headsets of 2018

Although we are likely to see incremental improvements to many popular VR headsets over the next twelve months, it appears some of the biggest VR news in 2018 may be focused on entirely new headsets from popular and less prominent manufacturers alike. Following is a summary of four pending devices that we feel are the most anticipated new headsets that will be released this year. Pimax 8K Having set a new funding record on Kickstarter for a VR project, the Pimax 8K appears ever-closer to winding up on the heads of its backers. The headset — the first to provide 8K resolution — is scheduled

Business, Companies, News, Qualcomm

Qualcomm going for European Approval for $39B NXP acquisition

Qualcomm Inc. is set to clinch European Union antitrust approval for its $39 billion acquisition of NXP Semiconductors during the next week. The EU opened an in-depth probe into the Qualcomm-NXP deal last June concerning that the deal may lead to higher prices, less choice and reduced innovation in the semiconductor industry. NXP has already significant presence in Austin after they acquired Freescale Semiconductor in 2015 for $11.9 billion. Qualcomm’s commitments will now include a pledge not to buy NXP’s standard essential patents, plus assurances that the rival products will still function with NXP’s, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Qualcomm agreed to

2018, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality (AR), Cloud Computing, Companies, Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Google, Hardware, HTC, Mobile, News, Qualcomm, Smartphones, Virtual Reality (VR)

CES: Lenovo introduces quartet of new AR and VR technologies

Lenovo used this week’s CES in Las Vegas to highlight several aspects of their 2018 product and service lineup in the augmented reality and virtual reality spaces. These announcements spanned both consumer and commercial/industrial applications, and include the Lenovo Mirage Solo headset, Mirage Camera, C220 Smart Glasses and NBD AH Cloud 2.0. Lenovo Mirage Solo and Mirage Camera with Daydream Billed as a “new take on VR consumption and creation,” this complementary product duo is targeted primarily at consumer markets. The Mirage Solo stands as the first stand-alone headset offering that is part of Google’s Daydream platform; an ill-fated offering from HTC was announced and

Audio/Video, Augmented Reality (AR), Breaking, Hardware, Mobile, Mobile World Congress, News, Qualcomm, Smartphones, Virtual Reality (VR), Wearables

Qualcomm Unveils Depth Sensing Spectra Module Camera

Qualcomm’s AR/VR efforts are accelerating. Following the launch of stand-alone Vive with Snapdragon VR 835 platform, the company launched Spectra ISP camera module for smartphone and headset manufacturers. Goal is to enable several new features which may be the key to simplification of how users around the world use their smartphones and headsets. While we mostly know Qualcomm as the manufacturer of Snapdragon processors, the company is also leading manufacturer of image processing systems, i.e. cameras. Second generation Spectra ISP proves that leadership with innovations such as active or passive depth sensing and biometric recognition (iris scan, facial features) – enabling future smart devices to

3D, AMD, Apple, ARM, Business, CPU, Exclusive, Graphics, Hardware, Intel, News, Nvidia, Qualcomm, startups

Two New X86 CPU Vendors coming to Market in 2018, 2020

One of everlasting legacies from former President of The United States (POTUS) Mr. Barrack Obama will be the creation of Chinese semiconductor industry. Following the ban on completion of Tianhe-2 supercomputer in 2014, Chinese government did not double down, but decided to put semiconductor industry as one of top 3 national priorities, and started to infuse over a quarter of trillion U.S. dollars, i.e. 2 trillion RMB (Yuan) into the domestic semiconductor industry, creating not a train, but a “Hyperloop Express” that is changing the semiconductor industry landscape. First, we’re starting to see the power of homegrown computers with ShenWei 260-core CPU processors powering the

Breaking, Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Event, Hardware, Mobile, Mobile Computing, Qualcomm, Reviews, Smartphones, VR World

Hands On: Xiaomi Mi MIX White Version

Over the past couple of years we haven’t seen any noticeable change in smartphone designs – candy bar form and some minor changes. The last big thing was edge screen we saw on Samsung Galaxy “Edge” family. Not so long ago Xiaomi decided to change that with what I call, the “XPS of Smartphones” (yes, we’re referring to Dell’s Apple-killer design notebooks). Mi Mix is smartphone with no bezels, and in that way is one of the first smartphones to bring this design to life. But let’s get it clear, this phone looks like one of those leaked fake designs of future Apple or Samsung

ARM, Breaking, Business, Event, Hardware, Microsoft, Mobile, News, Qualcomm, Software Programs, VR World, Windows

Microsoft Unveils ARM-based Windows 10 With Full X86 Compatibility

Four years ago, Microsoft was lead by Steve Ballmer, caught in a whirlwind of the “tablet tsunami” and eroding market share. The company wanted to ditch its traditional desktop apps in favor of new touch-based apps for tablets which featured ARM processors. A half-hearted project named Windows RT was born. “Windows on ARM” project debuted on Microsoft’s first Surface RT device featuring NVIDIA Tegra processor. It was a bold and confusing attempt to force people into a new world of touch apps, but Microsoft made the fatal mistake of providing something that looked like Windows but didn’t function like Windows. Windows RT couldn’t run traditional desktop apps, but

Buying Guides, Qualcomm, VR World

OnePlus 3 and 3T: What’s The Difference?

Recently discontinued OnePlus 3 was one of the best, if not the best smartphone when it comes to price/performance ratio. When the announcement for OnePlus 3T came out, everyone was trying to guess what’s coming next. After the official announcement and the big reveal, we decided to do the comparison of the two. OnePlus 3T shares the same design with its predecessor. Both are milled from a single piece of aluminum and they have the same dimensions and weight, measuring at 152.7 x 74.7 x 7.35mm and 158g. Despite rumors that OnePlus was switching to an LCD display, the OnePlus 3T features the Optic AMOLED display, just

AMD, Analysis, ARM, Breaking, Business, Enterprise, Exclusive, Hardware, HP, Intel, Military, Nvidia, Qualcomm, VR World

China Now Leads the Server Race: Meet the Phytium MARS Processor

Two decades ago, the US high end microprocessor industry was a lively, diverse market where about five various instruction set architectures battled it out across the workstation and server fields. You had choices like DEC’s Alpha – the speed leader; MIPS – the Silicon Graphics heart; SPARC from Sun Microsystems, IBM POWER, HP PA, the nascent X86, and a few custom architectures for MPP massive parallel processing, for instance. The rest of the world pretty much had nothing – British Transputer and German Hyperstone platforms died out due to lack of funding, while ARM was still keeping to the low end embedded arena after the end of the

Augmented Reality (AR), Breaking, Entertainment, Hardware, Mobile, News, Qualcomm, Virtual Reality (VR), Wearables, Wearables

Is ODG’s “Project Horizon” the Ultimate Mixed Reality Headset?

There’s little doubt that the most advanced augmented reality headgear currently exists solely in the realms of military use. From an eyeball projecting Heads-Up Display for the F-35 Lighting II fighter jet to high-resolution AR visor that doesn’t project blue color because well – blue is the color of the sky – these multi-thousand dollar pieces of equipment could solve the consumer conundrum for both VR and AR. Osterhout Design Group, also known as ODG is one of such military-focused company – just announced its consumer effort code named “Project Horizon”. In order to bring what might be the ultimate AR headset, ODG is teaming up

CPU, Hardware, Mobile, Mobile Computing, News, Qualcomm, Samsung, Smartphones

Samsung Galaxy S7 to Feature Gen2 14nm Exynos 8890, 5.1″ Display

As Mobile World Congress draws near, more information is coming out about all the new phones from key players in the industry. One such hotly expected family of smartphones will be 7th generation of Galaxy phones, more commonly known as the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. Samsung Galaxy S7, codenamed SM-G930F (the international version of S7) is expected to use a ‘Exynos 8890 version 7.0’ processor. From the information we managed to obtain, it will use Gen2 14nm FinFET process, designed and manufactured in Austin, TX. Given that 14nm is starting to look like a long node for Intel as well, as we reported yesterday

AMD, Graphics, Hardware, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung, VR World

Samsung Enables 16GB to 32GB HBM2 Graphics Memory

Samsung Semiconductor is on a roll of late. The company introduced FinFET transistors with the 14nm process last year for logic, beating Intel for the first time in history to to a new manufacturing node. 14nm process expanded from in-house Exynos SoC processors to customers such as Apple, Qualcomm and others, while Intel was trying to get Broadwell architecture out the door. This process was followed by the announcement of ultra-dense 15nm NAND Flash memory, and now the company announced mass-production of next-gen memory standard – HBM2. The company announced that it started mass production of High-Bandwidth Memory 2 chips using its 20nm process, which just got

Augmented Reality (AR), Business, Exclusive, Gaming, Hardware, Interviews, Qualcomm, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World

Inside Rivet Networks: How is Killer Reinventing Themselves?

In 2006, the world saw a public debut of two add-on cards that promised to change the gaming experience forever. AGEIA debuted PhysX, or Physics Processing Unit (PPU), while a small team from Texas introduced a Killer NPU – Network Processing Unit. In 2008, AGEIA ended up acquired by NVIDIA, while Bigfoot Networks was acquired by Qualcomm and became a part of Qualcomm Atheros. A few weeks ago, we learned that something unusual happened. It is very rare that the technology, once acquired ends up back in a standalone company. To be more precise, in a company owned and run by the original co-founders. Yet,

Cloud Computing, Companies, Internet of Things (IoT), Mellanox Technologies, Qualcomm, VR World

Qualcomm and Mellanox Work Together In Upgrading Server And Storage Platforms

Two great companies in the field, namely Qualcomm and Mellanox Technologies, announced a multi-phase technology collaboration that brings Qualcomm’s server technology ecosystem one step closer to commercialization. This corroboration will allow Mellanox and Qualcomm Technologies to offer the Ethernet and InfiniBand interconnect solutions that will work together with the ARM instruction set based server CPUs, to be fully optimized for scalable server and storage infrastructures. Mellanox’s product leadership with 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 Gigabit per-second Ethernet and InfiniBand interconnect technology provides solutions for the most efficient hyperscale deployments including Web 2.0, cloud, big data, database and storage applications. When paired with Qualcomm Technologies’