Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced a new 5G mobile platform in the 7-series, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G 5G Mobile Platform, which enables truly global 5G with brilliant HDR gaming and amazing on-device AI. To date, there have been more than 275 designs announced or in development based on Snapdragon 7-series mobile platforms, including 140 5G designs.

"We continue to see great traction with our high-tier Snapdragon 7-series 5G mobile platforms," said Kedar Kondap, vice president of product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "As we continue to build out this relatively new tier of our mobile roadmap, we're always looking for ways to support the growing needs of our OEM customers. Snapdragon 750G delivers a selection of premium mobile features to an even wider audience."

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, is powering better-than-ever virtual reality (VR) gameplay and experiences with the launch of Oculus Quest 2, the first-to-launch VR device powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Platform. Oculus Quest 2 is a culmination of years of collaboration between Qualcomm Technologies and Facebook to create the most advanced and immersive gaming VR experiences for consumers to-date.

Purpose-built for extended reality (XR), the Snapdragon XR2 Platform unlocks staggering improvements including twice the CPU and GPU performance compared to its predecessor which powers the original Oculus Quest headset. The Snapdragon XR2 Platform delivers significant performance enhancements in Oculus Quest 2 including:

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, announced the Qualcomm Cloud AI 100, a high-performance AI inference accelerator, is shipping to select worldwide customers. Qualcomm Cloud AI 100 uses advanced signal processing and cutting-edge power efficiency to support AI solutions for multiple environments including the datacenter, cloud edge, edge appliance, and 5G infrastructure. The newly announced Qualcomm Cloud AI 100 Edge Development Kit is engineered to accelerate adoption of edge applications by offering a complete system solution for AI processing up to 24 simultaneous 1080p video streams along with 5G connectivity.

"Qualcomm Technologies is well positioned to support complete edge-to-cloud high performance AI solutions that lead the industry in performance per watt," said Keith Kressin, senior vice president and general manager, computing and edge cloud, Qualcomm Technologies. "Qualcomm Cloud AI 100 is now shipping to select worldwide customers and we look forward to seeing commercial products launch in the first half of 2021."

Rumors fresh of South Korean shores claim that Samsung has snagged a position as sole provider for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 875 SoC on its 5 nm EUV manufacturing process. The reason for this, according to a supposed industry insider, boiled down to money (as it almost always does): Samsung simply offered lower pricing for chips manufactured under its 5 nm EUV process than TSMC did. The deal has been claimed to be worth some $840M. This makes sense, as Samsung has a considerable product portfolio - including lucrative memory fabrication - from which it can pool resources so as to lower pricing for new manufacturing technologies, whereas TSMC can only count on revenues it brings in from contracted silicon manufacturing deals.

Samsung's 5 nm EUV will still offer the now tried-and-true FinFet transistor design - next-generation GAAFET (gate all-around FET) are reserved for the companies' 3 nm efforts. This piece of news directly contradicts Digitimes' earlier reporting on Qualcomm leaving Samsung as a foundry partner due to lower than adequate yields for Samsung's 5 nm EUV. With Samsung already manufacturing NVIDIA's Ampere on its 8 nm node, and now with a confirmed high-volume client with Qualcomm, this likely means more available capacity for other TSMC clients - of which we could mention AMD and Apple.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced at Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) Berlin the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G compute platform, the company's most advanced and efficient compute platform. Users will benefit from superior performance and multi-day battery life*, 5G connectivity, enterprise-grade security and AI acceleration, as well as advanced camera and audio technology. These features will enable and support the digital transformation and mobility needs for remote productivity and learning experiences. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 is designed to enable industry leading 5G PC experiences and build on the innovative first-generation Snapdragon 8cx 5G compute platform, which powered the World's First 5G PC.

"Working remotely is the new reality, and more businesses are looking to quickly and securely connect their employee base, accelerating the need for always on, always connected PCs that are thin, light and truly mobile, equipped with blazing fast 5G cellular and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, and coupled with multi-day battery-life to boost productivity," said Miguel Nunes, Senior Director, Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "We are excited to expand our customer reach with Acer, to continue bringing the best of the Smartphone to the PC. Together, we will deliver cutting-edge devices and experiences to consumers and businesses, enabling them to connect, create and collaborate anytime from virtually anywhere."

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G Mobile Platform, a follow-on to the Snapdragon 730G. Snapdragon 732G is designed to deliver immersive gameplay backed by smarter, faster artificial intelligence (AI) and accelerated performance, including an upgraded GPU and CPU compared to the previous generation.

"Snapdragon 732G will deliver a powerful gaming experience, sophisticated on-device AI, and superior performance," said Kedar Kondap, vice president of product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "We're excited to work with POCO on the new POCO smartphone powered by the enhanced Snapdragon 732G globally."

In a bid to show off its volume production prowess and technological edge (but mostly to rub it in to rival fabs), TSMC on Thursday announced that it shipped its 1 billionth chip fabricated on its 7 nm process. If these dies were combined into one big rectangular wafer, they would cover 13 New York City blocks. TSMC's 7 nm process debuted with its N7 node, which went into volume production in April 2018, over two years ago. The fab has since mass-produced 7 nm chips for the likes of Qualcomm, Apple, and AMD, among dozens of other clients. The company now looks to monetize refinements of N7, namely the N7e and N7P (DUV refinements), while executing its crucial EUV-based N7+ node, leading up to future nodelets such as N6. Much of TSMC's growth will be propelled by 5G modems, application processors, and its pivotal role in the growth of companies such as AMD.

In the ave of the news that Trump administration has forbidden TSMC to have Huawei as its customer, Huawei seems to be exploring new options for sourcing the best performing mobile processors. As the company has turned to the Chinese SMIC semiconductor factory, it still needs a backup plan in the case of Chinese semiconductor manufacturing flops. So to combat US sanctions, Huawei will use already made chips form the US company - Qualcomm. By sourcing the processors from Qualcomm, Huawei is losing some benefits of customs design like better system integration, however, it will gain quite powerful mobile processors. As Qualcomm is known for providing the fastest processors for Android smartphones, Huawei has ensured that it remains competitive. Qualcomm is reportedly now negotiating with the US government about delivering the chips to Huawei, and if it is allowed, Qualcomm will gain a big customer.

SiFive, Inc., the leading provider of commercial RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions, today announced it raised $61 million in a Series E round led by SK hynix, joined by new investor Prosperity7 Ventures, with additional funding from existing investors, Sutter Hill Ventures, Western Digital Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Intel Capital, Osage University Partners, and Spark Capital.

"Global demand for storage and memory in the data center is increasing as AI-powered business intelligence and data processing growth continues", said Youjong Kang, VP of Growth Strategy, SK hynix. "SiFive is well-positioned to grow with opportunities created from data center, enterprise, storage and networking requirements for workload-focused processor IP."

Vulnerabilities in Qualcomm's DSP (Digital Signal Processor) present in the company's Snapdragon SoCs may render more than a billion Android phones susceptible to hacking. According to research reported this week by security firm Check Point, they've found more than 400 vulnerabilities in Snapdragon's DSP, which may allow attackers to monitor locations, listen to nearby audio in real time, and exfiltrate locally-stored photos and videos - besides being able to render the phone completely unresponsive.

The vulnerabilities (CVE-2020-11201, CVE-2020-11202, CVE-2020-11206, CVE-2020-11207, CVE-2020-11208 and CVE-2020-11209) can be exploited simply via a video download or any other content that's rendered by the chip that passes through its DSP. Targets can also be attacked by installing malicious apps that require no permissions at all. Qualcomm has already tackled the issue by stating they have worked to validate the issue, and have already issued mitigations to OEMs, which should be made available via software updates in the future. In the meantime, the company has said they have no evidence any of these flaws is being currently exploited, and advise all Snapdragon platform users to only install apps via trusted locations such as the Play Store.

Softbank-owned company Arm Ltd. has been a subject to a round of rumors regarding the potential buyout of the company because Softbank has considered selling it for some time. The company has approached NVIDIA, with their talks getting "advanced", and Samsung wants a piece of the cake as well. It is now reported that Softbank has approached TSMC and Foxconn as well, regarding a potential Arm takeover. In the report by Nikkei Asia, we have found out that Arm has shared the same financial data points and business plan with TSMC and Foxconn, the same way company did with NVIDIA.

If TSMC and Foxconn have any interest in the company, it would be necessary to create a consortium that would operate Arm Ltd. With NVIDIA, Samsung, and these two new players, the consortium would already count four companies. Nikkei sources claim that Apple and Qualcomm have been also included in the poll of potential buyers, which would make the idea of establishing a consortium very valid.

The "Gaming Accessories Market - Growth, Trends, and Forecasts (2020-2025)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global gaming accessories market is expected to reach a CAGR of 9.5% during the forecast period of 2020-2025. Increasing adoption of smartphones, rapidly evolving technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) are fueling the growth of the market across the globe.

Major gaming console manufacturers like Nintendo and Microsoft have realized the potentiality of AR and are leading the charge. AR can free gamers from their world' and usher them into the real world to play. For instance, Human Pac-Man is a game that allows the users to wear goggles and chase each other in real life, just resembling the characters in Pac-Man. Such developments are aiding the development of gaming accessories to provide enhanced gaming experience to gamers.

Semiconductor manufacturing is a difficult process. Often when a new node is being developed, there are new materials introduced that may cause some yield issues. Or perhaps with 7 nm and below nodes, they are quite difficult to manufacture due to their size, as the transistor can get damaged by the smallest impurity in silicon. So manufacturers have to be extra careful and must spend more time on the development of new nodes. According to industry sources over at DigiTimes, we have information that Samsung is struggling with its 5 nm EUV node.

This unfortunate news comes after the industry sources of DigiTimes reported that Qualcomm's next-generation 5G chipsets could be affected if Samsung doesn't improve its yields. While there are no specific pieces of information on what is the main cause of bad yields, there could be a plethora of reasons. From anything related to manufacturing equipment to silicon impurities. We don't know yet. We hope that Samsung can sort out these issues in time, so Qualcomm wouldn't need to reserve its orders at rival foundries and port the design to a new process.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. unveiled the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus 5G Mobile Platform, a follow-on to the flagship Snapdragon 865 that has powered more than 140 devices (announced or in development) - the most individual premium-tier designs powered by a single mobile platform this year. The new Snapdragon 865 Plus is designed to deliver increased performance across the board for superior gameplay and insanely fast Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gaming experiences, truly global 5G, and ultra-intuitive AI.

"As we work to scale 5G, we continue to invest in our premium tier, 8-series mobile platforms, to push the envelope in terms of performance and power efficiency and deliver the next generation of camera, AI and gaming experiences," said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, mobile, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "Building upon the success of Snapdragon 865, the new Snapdragon 865 Plus will deliver enhanced performance for the next wave of flagship smartphones."

Here at HTC Vive, we have long partnered with Qualcomm Technologies to bring amazing immersive mobile experiences to consumers and businesses. Throughout our history of making smartphones at HTC to creating VR headsets like Focus Plus, we leverage the latest and greatest processing power from Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile platform. Today we're furthering our commitment through an agreement to pre-integrate and optimize Vive's WAVE development platform for devices powered by Snapdragon including the Snapdragon 855, Snapdragon 865, Snapdragon XR1, and Snapdragon XR2 Platforms.

Starting now, the Vive Wave runtime will be made available to all Snapdragon customers on these chipsets. In addition, HTC engineers will offer testing and support for new deployments of the Wave platform as part of the agreement.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., today announced the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform - the Company's most advanced, integrated, comprehensive offering designed specifically for robotics. Building on the successful Qualcomm Robotics RB3 platform and its broad adoption in a wide array of robotics and drone products available today, the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform is comprised of an extensive set of hardware, software and development tools.

The Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform is the first of its kind to bring together the Company's deep expertise in 5G and AI to empower developers and manufacturers to create the next generation of high-compute, low-power robots and drones for the consumer, enterprise, defense, industrial and professional service sectors - and the comprehensive Qualcomm Robotics RB5 Development Kit helps ensure developers have the customization and flexibility they need to make their visions a commercial reality. To date, Qualcomm Technologies has engaged many leading companies that have endorsed the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform, including 20+ early adopters in the process of evaluating the platform.

Lenovo is blazing a path for mass adoption of ultra-fast, low-latency laptop connectivity through a series of mobile network operator partnerships committed to making 5G computing a reality for consumers around the world. On the heels of the earlier unveiling of the Lenovo Yoga 5G (known as Lenovo Flex 5G in the US)—the world's first 5G PC in market—Lenovo has formed strategic partnerships with leading 5G service providers around the world: Verizon, EE, Sunrise and CMCC. Powered by the Qualcomm ️ Snapdragon 8cx 5G compute platform, the Yoga 5G laptop delivers high-speed 5G network connectivity (through a 5G service provider) that's up to 10 times faster than 4G.

"Lenovo introduced the world's first 5G laptop in market to equip the mobile generation with smarter technology for always-on connectivity and computing. The hardware is just the first step," says Johnson Jia, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Consumer Business Segment in Lenovo's Intelligent Devices Group. "With our strategic partnerships with global 5G network carriers, consumers will now be able to access easier, faster and more secure connectivity seamlessly from virtually anywhere. As 5G computing holds the power to transform user experiences, we believe it can ultimately disrupt the PC industry for the better."

Last year Samsung and AMD announced their collaboration which promises to deliver smartphone chips with AMD RDNA 2 graphics at its heart. This collaboration is set to deliver first products sometime at the beginning of 2021 when Samsung will likely utilize new SoCs in their smartphones. In previous leaks, we have found that the GPU inside this processor is reportedly beating the competition form Qualcomm, where the AMD GPU was compared to Adreno 650. However, today we have obtained more information about the new SoC which is reportedly called "Ryzen C7" smartphone SoC. A new submission to a mobile phone leaks website called Slash Leaks has revealed a lot of new details to us.

The SoC looks like a beast. Manufactured on TSMC 5 nm process, it features two Gaugin Pro cores based on recently announced Arm Cortex-X1, two Gaugin cores based on Arm Cortex-A78, and four cores based on Arm Cortex-A55. This configuration represents a standard big.LITTLE CPU typical for smartphones. Two of the Cortex-X1 cores run at 3 GHz, two of Cortex-A78 run at 2.6 GHz, while four little cores are clocked at 2 GHz frequency. The GPU inside this piece of silicon is what is amazing. It features four cores of custom RDNA 2 based designs that are clocked at 700 MHz. These are reported to beat the Adreno 650 by 45% in performance measurements.

Qualcomm Technologies Inc, launches a flagship portfolio of mobile connectivity systems that represent the most advanced Wi-Fi 6E offerings of their kind. Building upon our leading Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth audio technology features, the Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 and Qualcomm FastConnect 6700 mobile connectivity systems feature the fastest available Wi-Fi speeds in the industry (up to 3.6 Gbps) on a mobile Wi-Fi offering, VR-class low latency and Bluetooth advancements delivering immersive audio experiences for classic and emerging LE Audio use cases.

"With the introduction of the FastConnect 6900 and 6700 solutions, Qualcomm Technologies is redefining the mobile experience by extending the power of Wi-Fi 6 into the 6 GHz band and advancing wireless audio with cutting-edge integrated Bluetooth 5.2 features," said Dino Bekis, vice president and general manager, mobile and compute connectivity, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "These innovations enable us to further break away from the pack and deliver a connectivity portfolio optimized to accelerate global adoption across multiple smartphone tiers."

Pico Interactive, a global tech company that develops innovative virtual reality (VR) and enterprise solutions, today announces the availability of its highly anticipated headsets from the Pico Neo line - the Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye, both of which deliver key VR solutions to the enterprise.

Both models were built with business in mind, featuring best-in-class 4K resolution, enterprise functionality, six degrees of freedom (6DoF) and spatial stereo speakers. The headsets feature the comfort and hygienic design of an all-PU facial interface, unique counterbalanced design for easy and extended wear, and have plenty of room for prescription glasses. Using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform with Boundless XR, the Neo 2 allows content streaming from a VR Ready PC and select existing PC VR platforms.

XRSPACE, the company pioneering the next generation of social reality, has today announced the launch of the world's first social VR platform designed for mass market users, combined with the first 5G mobile VR headset, delivering on the promise of a true social VR experience for all.

XRSPACE aims to create the social reality of the future - a world where people can interact both physically and virtually in a way that is contextual, familiar, immersive, interactive and personal. At a time when face-to-face interaction is restricted due to social distancing measures, XRSPACE is aiming to bring people together in a virtual world that is powered by cutting edge XR, AI, and computer vision technology, creating a new experience through 5G which is meaningful, anytime, anywhere.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, today at Augmented World Expo (AWE), celebrates the milestone of partnering with global operators, smartphone OEMs and XR viewer manufacturers to deliver XR viewers to consumers and enterprises within the next year. Since Qualcomm Technologies' device category introduction of XR viewers tethered to 5G smartphones, fifteen global operators including China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, EE, KDDI, KT, LG Uplus, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, SK Telecom, SoftBank, Telefonica, Verizon and Vodafone have shared plans to sample and commercialize XR viewers to provide immersive, never-before-experiences over 5G.

Lightweight, head-worn devices that connect to a smartphone powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 or 865 Mobile Platforms, XR viewers are glasses tethered to a 5G-enabled smartphone via USB-C cable. XR viewers unlock a new generation of immersive experiences using 5G-enabled smartphones that provide high bandwidth and low latency which is essential for high-quality XR. Consumers' favorite smartphone applications can become augmented reality (AR) experiences in front of their eyes or workplace meetings can be revolutionized through holographic telepresence with virtual collaboration platforms, as XR and 5G come together to transform how the world connects, communicates and consumes content.

Wi-Fi connectivity has become more essential than ever as we rely on it to work, teach, learn and stay connected to colleagues and loved ones. Fast, reliable and secure Wi-Fi connectivity is a necessity for keeping up as we add more connected devices and higher bandwidth applications for gaming, video streaming and content creation, as well as for processing increasingly larger file sizes. In today's homes there are an average of 11 Wi-Fi-enabled devices. Over the past few months, Comcast has reported that Wi-Fi-connected video calls and video conferencing have increased over 283%, and Charter Communications reports that over 90% of the traffic on its ISP network is Wi-Fi-based. Even in the case of your phone, more than 70% of your mobile (cellular) data traffic runs on Wi-Fi.

Intel has been investing and contributing to the evolution of Wi-Fi for more than 20 years, and today we're excited to announce another leap forward. We are acquiring Rivet Networks, a leader in software and cloud-based technologies for networking connectivity. Rivet Networks is a terrific complement to our existing Wi-Fi products and helps us further our vision of delivering PC platforms that power every person's greatest contribution. Rivet Networks' products deliver speed, intelligence and control for gamers and performance users. Its products maximize Wi-Fi bandwidth utilization and optimize the wireless network connection on your platform. In addition, Rivet Networks' products can also utilize the combination of Ethernet and Wi-Fi to prioritize traffic over both connections.

Power up your XR displays and 5G devices because NVIDIA is taking streaming to the next level. With the announcement today of the NVIDIA CloudXR 1.0 software development kit, we're bringing major advancements to streaming augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual reality content — collectively known as XR — over 5G, Wi-Fi and other high-performance networks.

With the NVIDIA CloudXR platform, any end device — including head-mounted displays (HMDs) and connected Windows and Android devices — can become a high-fidelity XR display capable of showcasing professional-quality graphics. CloudXR is built on NVIDIA RTX GPUs and the CloudXR SDK to allow streaming of immersive AR, MR or VR experiences from anywhere, whether from the data center, cloud or at the edge. And with NVIDIA GPU virtualization software, CloudXR scales efficiently allowing multiple users or tenants to securely share GPU resources.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the Qualcomm Snapdragon 768G Mobile Platform, a follow-on to the Snapdragon 765G. Snapdragon 768G is designed to bring next-level performance that enables smart, immersive gaming experiences with the integration of truly global 5G, sophisticated on-device AI and select Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gaming features.

"We are uniquely positioned to accelerate 5G commercialization at scale and Snapdragon 768G is an example of how we're continuing to deliver solutions to address the needs of our OEM customers," said Kedar Kondap, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "Our expanding portfolio has the potential to make 5G accessible to billions of smartphone users around the world."