Qualcomm adds 7 new chips to power IoT installations in retail, warehouse and manufacturing sectors

Qualcomm expands its IoT chip options with the release of seven new products today. Qualcomm senior director of product management Nagaraju Naik said that the new chips are a comprehensive offering from entry-level to high-end products that meet the needs of a broad range of IoT solutions.

Naik said that the high-end chips in particular will support video collaboration with support for high-resolution cameras and image signal processing for electronic pan, tilt and zoom actions.

SEE: Qualcomm announces new mobile platform and reference designs to speed up adoption of 5G (TechRepublic)

Naik said that the chips will be helpful for the retail sector in particular to support a variety of payment options such as touchless, smart carts, self-checkout and mobile payments.

“Companies need highly capable cameras and AI compute capability and connectivity to provide these services,” he said.

The chips can support a variety of activities, according to the company, including:

• Integrated connectivity
• Sensor fusion
• Person identification and detection
• Object detection
• Edge interaction
• Activity analysis
• Personalization

Naik said the chips also can support modern warehouse management from inventory management to package delivery to driver safety and productivity.

In a warehouse environment, the entry-level chip can power the handheld device for managing inventory while the high-end chip can run the robot that pulls items, Naik said.

SEE: Future of 5G: Projections, rollouts, use cases, and more (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

“All of these scenarios can be supported with the family of products we are introducing today,” he said.

Qualcomm also has promised extended life hardware and software options for a minimum of eight years for the new products. All of the new chips are available now except the QCM 6490.

Here are the details on each one.

Qualcomm QCS8250 

This is the company’s high-end chip for compute-intensive camera and artificial intelligence applications with support for Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6 solutions and 5G connectivity. This chip has the company’s KryoTM 585 CPU architecture, an artificial intelligence engine and an image signal processor to support up to seven concurrent cameras with encoding of up to 4K resolution at 120 frames per second. The chip also has a new neural processing unit for ultra-intuitive AI in addition to machine learning for compute-intensive IoT applications that include smart cameras, video collaboration, AI hubs, connected healthcare and smart retail. 

Qualcomm QCS6490/QCM6490

These chips are the company’s first optimized IoT solutions built to deliver global 5G connectivity and Wi-Fi 6E for high-tier IoT devices.The chips support 5G mmWave/Sub-6 GHz and Wi-Fi 6E and are designed to support the latest generation of ruggedized handhelds and tablets, industrial scanners, and human machine interface systems. The chips also provide reduced latency and dynamic triple ISPs. The company’s target applications for these chips are connected healthcare, logistics management, retail, transportation and warehousing.

Qualcomm QCS4290/QCM4290

These midlevel chips have the Kryo260 CPU architecture and the third generation Qualcomm AI Engine. The chips also are LTE Cat13 and Wi-Fi 6-Ready. The target applications for these chips are cameras, industrial handhelds and security panels.

Qualcomm QCS2290/QCM2290

These entry-level chips offer reliable performance and power-conservation with LTE connectivity, according to the company. The chips have the Cortex A53 CPU architecture and are pin-to-pin compatible with QCS4290/QCM4290, which helps to reduce cost and time to market. The company expects these chips to be used in camera applications, industrial handhelds, retail and tracking use cases.

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