Processing the Impact of Qualcomm

Qualcomm is known for its role in smart phones, but for IoT not many people understand its role in supporting everything from asset tracking to wearables. Qualcomm’s release of the 9205 chip is a reduction in size to half of the 9206 chip and reduces power consumption by 70 percent. As for processing, it supports increased security capabilities and GNSS support.

Quite candidly, it knows how to push processing down. The new 9205 chip is a good example of its abilities to meet the market requirements. It supports 3GPP release 14 including category M1 and NB2. It is also enables deployment for areas that have yet to deploy LTE with its enhanced GPRS support.

From an edge compute perspective it’s powered by “a variety of hardware and software components including: an ARM Cortex A7 processor, ThreadX and AliOS Things RTOS’s, and a comprehensive set of native networking protocols. Additionally, Qualcomm 9205 comes equipped with an LTE IoT SDK with comprehensive set of APIs for additional application and service enablement.”

Which brings me to a recent podcast with Qualcomm’s Gary Brotman, Senior Director and Head of AI & Machine Learning Product Management, and Hari Garlapati, Business Development & Technology Strategy, during which Mike Krell, Head of IoT Strategy at James Brehm & Associates, gave some context the how Qualcomm’s processing was impacting edge solutions.

Gary and Hari discuss how enabling edge devices and gateways are essential for IoT’s success and delivering on AI, real-time analytics, and other applications – all of which are key areas where Qualcomm is driving technology.

As Mike Krell points out the edge is in the eyes of the beholder. “HPE talks about edge as the demarcation point where IT meets OT and is pushing to move full cloud computing on premises. Dell thinks about edge as a gateway where you can standardize both southbound and northbound traffic. Cisco talks about the fog and edge computing being a subset of fog. MNO’s such as Sprint and AT&T use the term multi-access edge computing to discuss moving compute closer to the customer and to more local, premises-based compute and connectivity points at the edge of the mobile network.”

Bottom line: Qualcomm has the ability to impact the Edge in ways very few companies can.