Qualcomm announces Snapdragon Reality Elite chip for smart glasses

In short: Qualcomm has announced a new chip called Snapdragon Reality Elite, and it will first be used in Xreal’s Project Aura smart glasses later this year.

What happened

Qualcomm, a company that makes the main chips inside many phones and gadgets, introduced its Snapdragon Reality Elite chip at Augmented World Expo. A chip is like the engine of a device. A stronger engine can run more features at once.

Qualcomm said the new chip is meant for XR devices. XR is a catch-all term for digital images that appear in your view, like putting a computer screen into your glasses (think of it as a heads-up display for your eyes).

The chip will first show up in Xreal’s Project Aura glasses, which run Android XR. Qualcomm says people already got a brief look at these glasses at Google I/O last month, but the companies did not say then that the device was using the new Reality Elite chip.

Qualcomm says the Reality Elite improves performance across several parts of the chip. It claims a 60 percent GPU increase (graphics, which affects visuals), a 30 percent CPU increase (general computing), and up to 160 percent higher NPU performance (the part often used for AI tasks).

It also supports 4.4K resolution at 90 frames per second per eye, and it aims to reduce delay between head movement and what you see. Qualcomm says battery life can improve by up to 20 percent, and that the chip can run up to 12 degrees Celsius cooler than its previous XR chips.

Why it matters

Smart glasses have often felt limited by battery life, heat, and slow performance. If these claims hold up in real products, future glasses could be lighter, last longer, and handle more on-device AI features without getting as warm.

Source: The Verge AI