Qualcomm claims with its new technology, Tango phones will be able to handle “algorithms and sensors with a less than 10 percent CPU overhead compared to a normal app”. “We’re going to make Tango available on all of those chipsets”, Seshu Madhavapeddy, vice president of product management at Qualcomm, told eWEEK.
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Google’s Project Tango, an augmented reality project that packs a smartphone with 3D vision sensors, is finally on its way to consumers in the form of the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro. The company also announced that the future Snapdragon 800 and 600 series SoCs will support Google’s Tango.
Qualcomm has also shared a video that demonstrates the capabilities of its processors running on Tango-enabled smartphone. The chipmaker has also promised that future Snapdragon 600 and Snapdragon 800-series chipsets will support AR. Qualcomm is the world’s largest chip maker for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. “Tightly integrated into a single chip, the components of Snapdragon processors are uniquely equipped to simultaneously process data from all five Tango-related sensors”.
The Snapdragon 652 processor optimized for the Tango-ready Lenovo Phab2 Pro is just the beginning, but Qualcomm and Google have more ambitious plans in tow.
Some of the benefits the Snapdragon 652 offers for Tango devices include high accuracy, uniform time stamping of multiple sensor data streams; efficient processing without the need for external co-processors; and leading camera and sensor processing technology, the company said. Qualcomm boasts that, in fact, all its Snapdragon 600 and 800 processors are flawless for Tango.
Following the required optimizations, the chips can crunch data from the five sensors and three cameras, all working at the same time.
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Furthermore Qualcomm has extended the same courtesy to Snapdragon 820 and assures us that the same will be done for all following generations of the chips, hence allowing a wider range of devices to inculcate augmented reality within them. For instance, one could make use of superimposed AR images to see how a piece of furniture would fit in a room, or how their house would look like renovated before even hiring the workers.
