Qualcomm has launched a platform targeting the dedicated chipset market for mixed reality devices. Qualcomm Technologies said on Tuesday it unveiled the "Snapdragon Reality Elite platform".

The platform delivers up to 48 TOPS of on-device AI performance. Based on TOPS, a unit indicating the ability to process trillions of operations per second, it can run large language models (LLMs) and large vision models (LVMs) that handle image and spatial data on the device itself. It is designed to run features on the device alone, including Gaussian splatting that reproduces 3D scenes as point cloud data, LLM-based avatar generation and real-time object compositing.

Compared with its predecessor, the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2, GPU performance is improved by up to 60 percent, CPU by up to 30 percent and NPU by up to 160 percent. It supports up to 4.4K resolution per eye and 90 frames per second, and uses a hardware-accelerated "EVA block" to reduce video see-through latency and improve image quality. Battery life rises by up to 20 percent in the same working environment, while chipset temperature under high load falls by up to 12 degrees.

Snapdragon Reality Elite is set to be used in XREAL's "Project Aura" and Play for Dream's next-generation device, both due for release within the year. Qualcomm plans to expand its adoption to more Android extended reality (XR) devices.

Ziad Asghar (지아드 아스가르), Qualcomm senior vice president and head of XR, Wearables and Personal AI, said, "The XR market is already rapidly spreading across industries with more than 60 million devices launched," adding, "Snapdragon Reality Elite was designed to meet this demand based on powerful on-device AI, and delivers a faster, longer-lasting immersive experience."