Qualcomm says its new AR1+ Gen 1 chip can handle AI directly on smart glasses

Qualcomm’s has launched its latest processor for smart glasses, and though it’s a modest upgrade over the previous chip, it has a new trick. The Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1 can run AI directly on devices with no need for a smartphone or cloud connection, allowing users to go out or do chores with only their smart glasses, the company claims. The chip could appear in next-gen AR glasses from the likes of Meta and XReal.

Smart glasses often require large temple arms to accommodate chips and other components, but the AR1+ Gen 1 is 28 percent smaller than the the AR1 Gen 1, so it allows for a 20 percent temple height reduction. At the same time, it requires less power across key use cases including computer vision, wake with voice, Bluetooth playback and video streaming. Qualcomm also promises “premium” image quality via technologies like binocular display support, image stabilization and a massive multi-frame engine.

The key feature, though, is the on-glass AI powered by Qualcomm’s 3rd-gen Hexagon NPU, with 1 billion small language model (SLM) parameters on-glass. That allows it to run AI assistants that use SLMs like Llama 1B, with users speaking commands and seeing the results displayed on the glasses as text.

“While on stage, I was at the ‘supermarket’ and asked my glasses for help with fettuccine alfredo I needed to make for my daughter’s birthday party,” wrote Qualcomm SVP of XR Ziad Asghar. “This demonstration was a world’s first: an Autoregressive Generative AI model running completely on a pair of smart glasses.”

Qualcomm shouted out Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses as well as its chunky Orion AR glasses prototype as examples of where smart glass technology is heading. It then added that tech like its Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1 chip will enable “sleeker form factors that don’t compromise on the ability to run AI models.” Reading between the lines, you can expect the chip to appear in ever-slimmer standalone AI-powered smart glasses in the near future.