Qualcomm made some interesting announcements at the ongoing MWC 2024 in Barcelona, Spain. The chipmaker is advancing AI applicability with its new Qualcomm AI Hub and on-device generative AI capabilities. Qualcomm is also working with Indian telco Jio to launch affordable 5G smartphones. Let’s look at the best announcements from Qualcomm’s corner at MWC 2024.
Qualcomm AI Hub
Qualcomm has unveiled a new library of over 75 AI models specially optimized for Snapdragon platforms. The Qualcomm AI Hub, as it is being called, will help developers seamlessly integrate these AI models with their respective apps.
Qualcomm says that OEMs and app developers can run these AI models locally on the device or the cloud. Some notable AI models in the hub include Stable Diffusion, Whisper, ControlNet, Baichuan 7B, and many others.
The company is also testing Large Language and Vision Assistant (LLaVA) for Android smartphones. The concept is similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini AI.
Snapdragon X80 5G Modem-RF
Qualcomm also unveiled its upcoming Snapdragon X80 5G modem with support for satellite communication. With the help of this new modem, smartphone makers will not be required to use a dedicated chip for satellite connectivity. After Apple introduced emergency satellite communications with the iPhone 14, several Android OEMs are actively exploring the same for their flagships.
The Snapdragon X80 5G modem supports maximum download speeds of 10Gbps and upload speeds of over 3.5Gbps. It also features a dedicated tensor accelerator to improve the range and latency of signals.
Qualcomm is currently the market leader in 5G modems. In addition to its in-house Snapdragon chipsets, Qualcomm also supplies modems to Apple for its iPhones, iPads, and other devices.
On-Device Generative AI
Qualcomm also showcased the potential of its Snapdragon Compute Platforms at its MWC booth. The company demonstrated a large multimodal model (LMM) running on a Windows laptop that can accept text and audio inputs from the user. The system then uses on-device generative AI to create multi-turn conversations based on the input given by the user.
The chipmaker also unveiled Stable Diffusion with Low-Rank Adaption (LoRA), which enables generative AI locally on Android smartphones. In simple words, Qualcomm’s new AI has the potential to run services like ChatGPT and Gemini on the smartphone itself without any internet connection. App developers will be able to utilize these resources for their respective apps.
Qualcomm’s Partnership with Jio for Affordable 5G Phones
Qualcomm announced a new partnership with Jio to launch 5G smartphones for around Rs 10,000. This partnership aims to shift existing 2G users to the modern 5G networks at a low-cost entry barrier.
Jio and Qualcomm say that their budget-friendly 5G devices will launch in India by the end of 2024. Jio is currently leading the 5G rollout in the country, shortly followed by Airtel. The new partnership between the two entities is expected to connect millions of users in smaller cities with 5G networks. Previously, Jio had also partnered with Google to launch budget-friendly 4G phones.
