Hello everyone and welcome back to AR Insider Innovators. I'm your host Mike Boland and our guest today is Ziad Asghar who's SVP and GM of XR at Qualcomm. So Ziad, welcome to the program.
Yeah. So, this is a special episode of AR Insider Innovators because we're here at AWE this week and Ziad just stepped off the stage earlier today for his keynote and there are a lot of exciting things to dive into there. But before we do that, Ziad, tell us a bit more about you and your role at Qualcomm for those unfamiliar.
Yeah. So, you know, I do a lot of very interesting things and I get paid for it. But what that really means is that basically I drive the technology, the road map and really the ecosystem from our AR, VR and MR product lines. And it's a super exciting time in this domain especially with what we're seeing today with XR and AI coming together. And I think there's a massive amount of opportunity there and I'm sure we'll talk a lot more about it in the next few minutes.
Absolutely. So as many of our sort of viewers and readers know Qualcomm has a critical role in the spatial computing ecosystem but to sort of level set and start at the beginning for those unfamiliar, tell us at a high level about Qualcomm's role, the operational scale, the number of devices you power at least those that you disclose, and just sort of the broader strategy and philosophy in all of your XR endeavors.
Yeah. So I think we are very focused and if you picked up any device today that's basically for VR, MR or AR, there's a good chance that it will be using a Snapdragon solution. And the reason for that really is we have been investing in this space for more than a decade. We have basically invested in creating all the perception technologies. We have acquired multiple teams for example for hand tracking and for 3D reconstruction, other core perception technologies. And what we've really done is in the process of acquiring them, we've looked at those portions that are executing multiple times a frame or multiple times a second. We've taken that goodness and intelligence and actually hardened it in the silicon. And in the process of doing that, we are able to do certain things at power that nobody else is able to do. And with that approach, what we have done is we actually created two distinct product families. There's a product family for MR and VR product line and there's a product family for our AR and smart glasses product lines. And we call it the AR products. And essentially the way to think about it is these two product lines are actually quite different. The requirements that you have on an MR headset with the level of rendering capability with all the concurrent AI networks that are running at any given point in time, all the neural networks for hand tracking and eye tracking and all that are running, it's a very very compute device. But what makes it even more challenging is that an ML device requires you to work at that level but to sustain that performance level. And that is what we are very good at at Qualcomm, right? We've done this in devices that are not plugged in, but they run off of a battery and we really like what we think we can take this technology towards. Similarly, on the AR side, what might be a 10, 15 or 20 W power envelope on the MR side becomes a fraction of that, logarithmically smaller, almost like a watt at most. So now you got to be able to do best-in-class camera technology, best-in-class audio, video, microphone, all of that running at a power envelope that very few companies can do. And again, I call this a Qualcomm size problem because we know how to be able to do more for a given amount of power than anybody else. This is really our pedigree. And then to put it all together, what we really focus on is the right transistor technology. Then on top of that, we take our best-in-class core processing technologies. We have best-in-class CPUs that we do in-house. These are custom CPUs. We do best-in-class graphics with our Adreno family of products. We have the highest performance camera technology and all of these are really relevant and absolutely critical to make best-in-class XR products. We built those on top. On top of that, we bring in the perception algorithms. On top of that, we have our developer platforms like Spaces and others. And of course, we support Android XR and we support Horizon OS as well. So those are kind of all the pieces how we're driving the space forward.
Yeah. And we're going to get into Android XR in a bit. Now to sort of mentally map that, I think the key term in everything you just said is purpose-built. And I think we're seeing a sort of diversifying continuum of XR devices that require that. And to sort of again mentally map that, you mentioned your two sort of the delineation in the chipsets. There are of course many different generations and variations that you're going to go into, but they are the AR series and the XR series. So, the XR series purpose-built for devices like Quest 3, right, where there's a need for resolution and rendering versus, as you noted with devices that are optical see-through devices, they need to be more lightweight, a device like Snap Spectacles have a much different set of needs. And it's maybe portability and hand tracking and situational awareness. And I think that speaks to one of the key challenges with XR is not only that sort of broadening hardware continuum that we're going to get into, but all of these different functions per device make it so that it's no longer about having CPU and GPU. It's sort of dedicated processing for all of these little functions that need to sort of work in tandem. Everything from inputs and hand tracking to sensors and making sense of the world. Is that a fair way to put it?
Absolutely. Right. I mean, this is fairly specialized, right? Like you alluded to, right? Even if we just talk about graphics and rendering, we are not just doing normal graphics and rendering that we do in a smartphone form factor. What we do over here is foveated rendering for example. And the whole pipeline has to be foveated. And fovea being of course the center of your retina. So you're really doing much more resolution at the center with lesser resolution as you go further out. And that's how you're able to do this amazingly high resolution displays and be able to support them in a sustained fashion. And those specializations that we're talking about, in addition to that we have built in a very specialized computer vision block and that block has all of these hardenings for the perception algorithms in addition to that. And then what we have done is and that's why these products are all custom built like you alluded to. So XR products for MR/VR, AR products much more for smart glasses and immersive AR and see-through like products, they are specialized in the sense that now you're much more focused on power. I'd say for the latter category it's really power, power and then it's any other factors and that's why they're so distinct. And you know we're very glad that we've built a pretty large portfolio and connecting to that actually we just announced the latest member of the AR family that we are calling the AR1 Plus. So you know we've been hearing our customers and what's very important is what is critical when you want to build a nice form factor smart glass. It's basically number one the size so we're really focused on reducing the size of our solution by about 20% such that it can fit into more compact smaller devices on the leg of the smart glass. That's one key thing we've done. The second thing we have done is really focused on improving power consumption because again these devices are very light devices with very little to no room for a battery. So as you are able to use that battery in a more efficient manner, you are actually able to make that use case last for much longer. So that's been the second major area of focus. The third one has been camera and image quality. Right. I mean, you can imagine that you're sitting in a dark restaurant having dinner and you're holding the menu in front of you and your smart glass needs to understand all of the text that's actually written on that menu. Well, you can do that with the great multi-frame sort of processing that we have built into our products, but we have enhanced that with AR1 Plus. We have also enhanced the image stabilization capability because what we're realizing is the way people move their head is quite different than the way they move their hands when they're holding a smartphone in their hand. So we're actually making that a lot more capable. And then lastly, we're really pushing hard on the AI capability in these devices because I want to say really that the ideal device for agentic sort of AI flow or for a world where it's an appless world where AI is the UI and that device is really a smart glass. So what I was able to show on stage today and very exciting was essentially a 1 billion parameter language model running just on the smart glass. And this smart glass is in airplane mode which means it's not using the internet, it's not using your phone for offload, it's not using the cloud for offload and it's able to run that full foundational language model entirely on the smart glass. I feel that really opens up a whole set of possibilities of this device form factor existing and working independently of anything else. And I think that's where I see this technology going forward in the future.
Yeah. And that really is the headline today, your announcement for the first time on the stage of AR1 Plus Gen 1. And one of the reasons why I think just to underscore why this is impactful and high stakes to add to everything you just said is that it carries forward that theme we've been discussing about chipsets that are purpose-built for the hardware and the use cases that are developing. And the biggest hardware and use case that's developing today in terms of traction and unit sales is AI powered smart glasses light on visuals but the sort of selling point which deviates from the traditional sort of approach in the AR world. The traditional selling point has always been visuals. Now it's more situational awareness. It's all the things you just mentioned. It is, you know, camera being able to have media capture or just sensing the world around you to have visual search or other sort of intelligence appended to the world around you as you walk around. And that seems to be the use case that's developing. So, it sounds like AR1 Plus Gen 1 sort of is built for that use case. And I think it's also important to note that what you said about on-device processing is important because that sort of alleviates some of the AI based concern out there in terms of the amount of sensitive data whether it be biometrics or information that AI glasses are sort of consuming. You've sort of preempted that challenge or that concern.
Yeah, I think that's a great point. Right. So by being able to do more on-device AI processing we are able to take away some of those privacy concerns that people have because now that information that's very very critical, very private never leaves the device and in being able to do that you keep that information private. Secondly, if you want to do certain excessive amount of cloud processing there is a cost associated with that. So if you're able to do it on the device you're actually able to do it pretty much free right and free is of course a great price. And then the other aspect that comes in with this also is the personalized aspect of AI. So what I mean by that is if you really think about the constellation of devices around a user, you know, you have your smart glass, you have your smartwatch, you basically have your smartphone, you have your earbuds. The context information that you're able to get from all these devices is uniquely different. The smartphone typically knows your location. The smart glass is able to tell you about all the environment outside. It's able to tell you it's daylight. It's able to tell you this is, you know, you're talking on a video conference call at this point in time. Your smartwatch is able to tell you what's happening inside, you know, the heart rate, the activity level, the stress level, all those things. Now can you imagine that with this additional context how much of a better job can you do with generative AI when you have those additional pieces of information and I think that's the personalized aspect of AI that we are able to bring when we do it on device that makes it quite distinctive as well.
Absolutely. I mean, what we keep saying is that AI is going to be a force multiplier for XR and really fulfill all of those sort of visions, those futuristic visions we've always had in the XR space about what it can and should be. I think AI is starting to unlock all of that. Now, in addition to, you know, we started with this sort of main delineation of the series of XR and AR chips, and then went into some of the examples of how they have variations and generations, particularly what you just announced on stage. In addition to that, Qualcomm works with a lot of OEM partners for sort of customized versions, but also to get valuable input from them on their device requirements as they're building things to optimize and inform the design of your architecture. So tell us about a few of those sort of close collaborations. You know, you've been working with Meta for years on a lot of these levels. You know, you famously sort of have the dual SOC that's in Snap Spectacles and now looking forward the exciting work that's underway with Google and Samsung around Android XR. So tell us about those relationships and how those work.
Yeah, I think we are very fortunate that we're working with really the key companies in the space that are launching these amazing devices. We have had a very long-standing relationship with Meta and we've launched these amazing products out there. You can look at the Meta Quest devices. If you look at Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses which have really established this as a category and people are really flocking towards it. I think you see celebrities wearing them. You see all the people wearing them because of the ease of use that comes with a device like this. So we're very excited about working with them as we go forward as well. And of course I had one of our partners up on the stage as well today. So you saw quite a lot of the new use cases that they are looking at doing. And I think that's how this space moves forward with us collaborating with all of our OEM partners. Similarly, Snap is very unique that they have a very different form factor. So when you think about Meta, they of course have the all-in-one great device which is the Quest-like product. They have the very light smart glasses. Snap has been focused on an all-in-one AR device, a fully immersive AR device. And it's a very unique, a different form factor. And I think that's the key point with our platforms. We're actually able to enable very well differentiated end products for our OEMs. They're able to differentiate on the form factor, on the use cases, on the capabilities, on power, on battery, all of those things together. And Snap is actually taking a dual SOC architecture where I mean if you talk to them, they'll explain how they're actually able to do more of the apps on one of the application processor and then much more of the perception on the other application processor. And this gives them some very unique benefits from a power and other aspects as well. And then of course we've just launched our Android XR product lines and we also had our Google colleague on the stage today at AWE just to talk about what they're thinking of doing. We're very excited, you know, devices with that we're working with our partner we worked with for years Samsung will be launching the Muhan device that they have shown and really a lot more. But I feel that these are all very different swim lanes and that's the real crazy, amazing part about this space because with Android XR it's attached to a smartphone, with what we are working with Meta and with some of our other partners it's attached almost to the cloud and these companies have amazing cloud assets and the AI assets that gives them a very unique advantage in that space. And then we have a third set of partners. They're actually talking about connecting the smart glass to a puck. Think of a puck as a, you know, like a headless smartphone almost. And you're able to offload from the smart glass onto that device. And in doing that, you're actually able to get even longer life on the product, a longer battery life by being able to say that all the work is not being done on the glass. So really different form factors, very different use cases, swim lanes, but it allows the consumers to be able to really experience some amazing devices that have launched, but there is some really, really impressive stuff that's coming in the pipeline as well.
Yeah, and you're right about Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sort of going mainstream. Celebrities are using them as you said, but within their swim lane, I think they've really validated that category just in terms of, you know, you can't argue with the numbers. They've announced they've sold as of this past February two million lifetime units and to put that into perspective a lot of the sort of previous generation sort of AR headsets those that were based on heavy visuals let's take Magic Leap 2 for example devices like that we've sort of projected in our market sizing that the unit sales per year are more in the thousands right and we're talking here about two million so it really is an inflection in that sort of breaking into the mainstream finally and testing different modulations and different form factors to get there. And I think what Meta has done there is really validated that particular swim lane to use your analogy. Now, let's go deeper on Android XR. I think there's a lot of excitement there. You know, we just had Google IO. And you're of course one of the partners in that sort of triad of Google, Qualcomm, and Samsung. Now, I want to hear your thoughts on what you believe that will sort of do for the overall XR ecosystem in terms of introducing another platform, more choice, more device diversity, more competition, and particularly in light of like historical lessons where Google really opened things up 15 years ago with Android in its original sort of manifestation as a mobile operating system. What do you think Android will do for XR overall?
