At IFA, Qualcomm announced a new platform that makes us question: “What took so long?” You might recall that last fall, the company announced a reference platform for drones, called Snapdragon Flight. That was a good launch, but it definitely made us question where a VR reference platform was; after all, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips have been used for VR very heavily in the mobile space. The answer? We just had to wait a little bit.
The result of our patience is the Snapdragon VR820, an SoC based on one of Qualcomm’s most powerful chips: Snapdragon 820 (as is found in the OnePlus 3). The Adreno 530 graphics found within the 820 is beefy enough to deliver quality VR experiences, but the VR820 brings more to the table than just performance to make it ideal for VR use.
Official specs and features:
- Visual Quality:
- Qualcomm® Adreno™ 530 GPU for next-generation console-quality VR gaming and apps, while delivering up to 40 percent improvement to graphics performance and compute capabilities compared to its predecessor
- Smooth, stereoscopic 3D, with foveated rendering, and support for the latest graphics APIs
- 1440×1440 resolution per eye, AMOLED panel that supports up to 70H
- 360° 4K video playback processing with HEVC compression and display refresh rates at 70 FP
- Qualcomm® TruPalette™ display gamut mapping, color enhancement comprehensive control over colors
- Qualcomm® EcoPix™ pixel compression, with variable refresh for extended battery life
- Sound Quality:
- Stereo, binaural positional audio, and 3D surround sound, powered by Qualcomm Aqstic™ audio technologies
- Four microphones with Fluence™ HD noise filtering and active noise cancellation
- Intuitive Interactions:
- Dual Qualcomm Spectra™ camera ISPs combined with Qualcomm® Hexagon™ DSP for advanced vision features such as look-through imaging and 3D reconstruction, eye-tracking and hand gestures
- Predictive, monocular visual motion tracking with full 6DOF at 800Hz for smooth tracking of head motion in movement as well as rotation
- Ultra-fast sensing, processing with average motion to photon latency under 18ms
- Powerful computing:
- Custom-designed 64-bit Qualcomm® Kryo™ quad-core CPU for high-performance computing
- Integrated Hexagon 680 DSP for efficiently processing advanced vision, audio, and Qualcomm All-Ways Aware™ ultra-low power “always-on” sensor technology without impacting CPU processing load
At the forefront, the VR820 is designed to accurately track your eyes with the use of two cameras, supporting six degrees of freedom (6DOF). It also supports four microphones, a gyro, accelerometer, as well as a magnetometer sensor. Other perks include support for 1440×1440 resolution per eye, 360°C 4K playback with HEVC support, and integrated Hexagon 680 DSP for efficient audio and visual processing.
Qualcomm anticipates that its Snapdragon VR820 platform will become available in Q4 of this year. As with most OEM products, this one doesn’t carry a price tag quite yet. Given the momentum of VR, we wouldn’t be surprised to see these chips fly off the shelves as soon as they hit the market.