The MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2015 witnessed a new lion entering the jungle. The semiconductor company Qualcomm (QCOM) has launched a “Cognitive Computing Platform,” which is capable of predicting the needs of the users even before they mention it to the device.
The How And When
The project is named as Zeroth. Qualcomm is planning to put together its capabilities, hardware and software, to bring this new technology forward for the users. Along with this project, the company is also expected to introduce its next-gen, top-end Snapdragon 820 chip, as it would facilitate the new platform. Other firms that are keen about this new project and the chip would have to wait a little more. They won’t be having access to any of it until the second half of 2015. It is being speculated that the new devices would enter the market equipped with the chip by the end of this year.
“It’s a learning phone which can personalize with time, and work better and better for you,” Raj Talluri (a Qualcomm products executive) told CNET in an interview. “I think it’s huge. I have never seen anybody run a deep-learning network of this complexity on a mobile phone.”Â
According to the reports of CNET: “Zeroth can be used in new phones with the Snapdragon 820 chip, but a more basic version can also be added to current phones through a software update.”
“Putting the machine learning features on the chip, rather than in cloud, will make mobile devices more personal and more useful than they are today,” said Derek Aberle, president of Qualcomm in a conference at Mobile World Congress.
He said, “Devices will be able to learn more about users and their habits by associating and analyzing information collected through voice, sound, video and images.”
A Long Road Ahead
Qualcomm also introduced a new 3D fingerprint reading technology, known as Sense ID. This ultrasonic technology allows a smart phone to scan a print through aluminum, sapphire, coverglass or stainless steel. The new feature would provide the manufacturers of smart phones more flexibility in terms of fashioning devices without any home buttons.
Zeroth is an effort towards making the devices smarter, allowing them to understand and process, not just the inputs put in by the users, but also the natural environment around them. A handful of such efforts are coming forward, for example, Nvidia (NVDA, Financial) in January launched Tegra X1 chip, which is a revolutionary step towards enabling self driving. Qualcomm is planning to use Zeroth not just in mobile phones, but also in cars and wearables.
Parting words
“It’s nice to see Qualcomm once again make in-house custom CPU cores. They underestimated the marketing power of 64-bit capability which took them off their custom CPU game for a while, forcing them to license ARM cores like all of their competitors,” said Patrick Moorehead (President and Principal analyst of Moor Insights and Strategy). He further adds “Qualcomm remained competitive by leveraging their expertise in modems, GPUs, DSPs, fixed function controllers like video and heterogeneous hardware and software integration, but they are back on track with Kryo and ready to prove they can sit on the top of CPU stack again. It won’t be easy as both Apple and Intel want to sit on top too.”
Will this buy back the lost shine for Qualcomm in the face of intense competition from Mediatrek and the like? It will be worth keeping an eye on how things work out for the chipset giant with the new innovations.
