Snapdragon Summit: Setting the pace of innovation

This years' Snapdragon Summit reached for the stars, and I'm here for it

When we landed on Maui it was windy but very warm. Coming from Canada, specifically in below zero (Celsius) temperatures, it was a welcome feeling. And just as the temperature was up, my excitement was kicking into high gear.

After being whisked to the hotel, I was immediately drawn to a giant Snapdragon booth set up in the lobby. Here were around 20 models of new Snapdragon X Series laptops, along with a display of current (and future) smartphones, wearables and headphones all powered by some form of Snapdragon chips.

The excitement was palpable.

After checking in, I immediately went exploring. I found a few familiar faces as well as some new one’s who are part of the Snapdragon Insiders community (which if you have not yet joined, please do) and had some nice catch-up chats about the days to come.

At this point I was exhausted from the 10+ hour flight and 6-hour time change, so after a good night’s rest it was time for day 1.

The stars indeed, aligned

The day started with great conversations with other industry professionals, media personalities and Insiders over a delicious breakfast to prepare for the day’s announcements.

We were ushered into the keynote like VIPs before everyone else (front row seats!) which gave us the best seat in the house for the upcoming presentations.

The star (pun intended) of the show was of course the 8 Elite mobile SoC (system on a chip), complete with Qualcomm’s custom Oryon cores that we’ve seen in their bigger siblings such as the Snapdragon X Series of laptops, scaled down for the mobile market. From the benchmarks I saw firsthand, this will be a game changer. CPU/GPU performance and efficiency is up across the board. On device AI tasks can be done quicker than before, and now you can have console level gaming right on your smartphone. One of these gaming features was the announcement that the full Unreal Engine Nanite engine, complete with raytracing via Lumen, would be supported!

After the keynote we were able to experience some of the new feature demos from the 8 Elite. One of the more impressive demos allowed you to magically erase someone from a photo after you’ve taken it using images that you’ve already captured of the same area.

Now, if you’ve followed me on social media, you know that the Snapdragon X Series is one of my favourite pieces of tech right now. The battery life and performance are simply unmatched and has spiced things up in the compute space to levels we have not seen in many, many years. So, you know that I was very excited when they also announced that Qualcomm teamed up with Microsoft and Yamaha to develop a universal low-latency USB driver for ASIO audio interfaces, which allow near zero latency support for interfaces musicians use to record music. The demo for this was absolutely amazing, which was a guitarist and someone playing the keyboard (to a full orchestra) using these interfaces on Snapdragon powered PCs. The PCs hosted Steinberg software that used the NPU on these laptops to isolate specific instruments, etc, which was impressive on its own, but listening to the music live coming from these devices was amazing.

After the day full of exciting announcements and demos, it was now time to relax with a nice dinner and then some much needed rest to prepare for the next day.

Driving into the stars

Most people who know me, know me as the “EV guy”. So, when I heard that day two would be all about auto, I was very excited. I love electric cars and what they mean for sustainability in the transportation sector, not to mention how fun they are to drive, nor the amount of mind-blowing tech crammed into them.

The keynote focused on the announcement of the Snapdragon Digital Chassis Cockpit Elite and Ride Elite platforms, which feature the same second-generation Oryon custom CPU cores but packed for automotive. Not only will vehicles now have processing power for today’s most demanding tasks like enhanced driver assistance features and AI workloads, but they are also set up to continually grow and advance with updates pushed out by vehicle manufacturers.

New vehicles are continually being released as connected cars, which means they are ‘always on’. For EVs especially, this can cause battery drain if you leave your vehicles sitting for a few days or longer due to the vehicle maintaining an internet connection either by Wi-Fi or cellular modem. This can cause what’s known as ‘vampire drain’. I was surprised to see a slide specifically aimed at tackling this by putting an emphasis on energy efficiency with some benchmarks showcasing the low energy use when the vehicle is idle.

After the keynote was finished, we headed out to the gardens for some demos! We got to see some new Snapdragon Digital Chassis powered vehicles up close, like the Rivian R1S, Chevrolet Blazer EV, and the BMW i5. For me the Rivian R1S was the favourite, as its spooky Halloween mode won me over!

For vehicles running the Snapdragon platform, the difference is noticeable, especially in the infotainment area. The menus are buttery smooth and have feature rich animations, some of which are even powered by the Unreal engine like in the Rivian. This has led to some graphically interesting features, as well.

Oh, and you can also check out my day 2 recap over on the Snapdragon Insiders website.

Goodbye, Maui

The final day was upon us which meant my time in Hawaii was coming to a close. But first, Snapdragon took us on a wonderful snorkeling adventure to see some coral reef and tropical fish, plus spend some time on a catamaran. After this lovely excursion, we had some free time to explore (and head to the beach) before the ceremonial luau dinner. The dinner was fantastic, with great food and entertainment.

It was a bittersweet moment, since we had such a lovely evening knowing that in the morning, I would be saying goodbye to some new and long-time friends.

One thing is for sure though: I absolutely cannot wait to see devices with the 8 Elite chips hit shelves here in North America and continue to see new vehicles being released with the Snapdragon Digital Chassis!

Stay tuned as I am planning to write some more articles based on hands on experience with the Snapdragon X Series platform in an enterprise environment, and hopefully more about the 8 Elite platform when devices start shipping in North America.

Disclaimer: Travel and lodging was provided by Qualcomm