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Qualcomm has announced that it is developing a wearables platform for Wear OS, Google’s operating system for smartwatches, based on RISC-V technology, in collaboration with Google itself.
The chipmaker says that this new solution will help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) reduce their time to market when launching smartwatches. Additionally, the newly expanded framework is expected to open up new possibilities for more products within the ecosystem to leverage custom CPUs that offer better performance while consuming less power.
“We are excited to leverage RISC-V and expand our Snapdragon Wear platform as a leading silicon provider for Wear OS. Our Snapdragon Wear platform innovations will help the Wear OS ecosystem rapidly evolve and streamline new device launches globally,” said Dino Bekis, vice president and general manager of Wearables and Mixed Signal Solutions, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
“Qualcomm Technologies have been a pillar of the Wear OS ecosystem, providing high performance, low power systems for many of our OEM partners,” said Bjorn Kilburn, GM of Wear OS by Google. “We are excited to extend our work with Qualcomm Technologies and bring a RISC-V wearable solution to market.”
What is RISC-V, and why Qualcomm, Google is using it
RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture developed and maintained by RISC-V International. Companies can freely use and modify it. In contrast, Arm is not an open standard and is controlled and licensed by Arm Holdings.
Google already uses RISC-V for its Titan M2 security chip in the Google Pixel series.
Chipmakers, including Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek, pay ARM for the use of their Cortex CPU designs. However, some companies like Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm opt to design their own CPUs in-house, but this requires an expensive “architectural licence,” which also goes to ARM.
Since RISC-V is open source, Qualcomm will not have to pay up money to ARM. And after its recent fallout with ARM, this seems to be a huge move targeted towards the chip designer. Well, this could also be the beginning of a bigger shift away from ARM, as the two are embroiled in a legal battle.
In August, five chipmakers, including Qualcomm, formed an alliance to promote the new standard for chips. RISC-V, headquartered in Switzerland, has been highly praised by Google. In December, Lars Bergstrom, Android’s Director of Engineering, called for RISC-V to become a “tier-1 platform” on the same level as Arm in the operating system.
Qualcomm says that details about the commercial launch of the RISC-V platform for WearOS wearables will be announced at a later date.
The chipmaker says that this new solution will help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) reduce their time to market when launching smartwatches. Additionally, the newly expanded framework is expected to open up new possibilities for more products within the ecosystem to leverage custom CPUs that offer better performance while consuming less power.
“We are excited to leverage RISC-V and expand our Snapdragon Wear platform as a leading silicon provider for Wear OS. Our Snapdragon Wear platform innovations will help the Wear OS ecosystem rapidly evolve and streamline new device launches globally,” said Dino Bekis, vice president and general manager of Wearables and Mixed Signal Solutions, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
“Qualcomm Technologies have been a pillar of the Wear OS ecosystem, providing high performance, low power systems for many of our OEM partners,” said Bjorn Kilburn, GM of Wear OS by Google. “We are excited to extend our work with Qualcomm Technologies and bring a RISC-V wearable solution to market.”
What is RISC-V, and why Qualcomm, Google is using it
RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture developed and maintained by RISC-V International. Companies can freely use and modify it. In contrast, Arm is not an open standard and is controlled and licensed by Arm Holdings.
Google already uses RISC-V for its Titan M2 security chip in the Google Pixel series.
Chipmakers, including Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek, pay ARM for the use of their Cortex CPU designs. However, some companies like Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm opt to design their own CPUs in-house, but this requires an expensive “architectural licence,” which also goes to ARM.
Since RISC-V is open source, Qualcomm will not have to pay up money to ARM. And after its recent fallout with ARM, this seems to be a huge move targeted towards the chip designer. Well, this could also be the beginning of a bigger shift away from ARM, as the two are embroiled in a legal battle.
In August, five chipmakers, including Qualcomm, formed an alliance to promote the new standard for chips. RISC-V, headquartered in Switzerland, has been highly praised by Google. In December, Lars Bergstrom, Android’s Director of Engineering, called for RISC-V to become a “tier-1 platform” on the same level as Arm in the operating system.
Qualcomm says that details about the commercial launch of the RISC-V platform for WearOS wearables will be announced at a later date.
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