Qualcomm Forms Artificial Intelligence Research Unit

Qualcomm announced a new division that would unify all its fundamental artificial intelligence research. Qualcomm A.I. Research gives form to what was largely an amorphous effort inside the company, which is focused on moving inference out of the cloud and into devices installed with its mobile chips, such as smartphones, warehouse robots, cars and security cameras. The reorganization reflects Qualcomm's doubling down on embedded artificial intelligence, which it argues can improve privacy for applications like voice-controlled speakers and save energy wasted sending information to the cloud. Taking artificial intelligence – a blanket term that includes machine learning – out of the cloud would also lower latency, which is important in mission-critical devices that require fast reaction times, like driverless cars. Accordingly, the company is focused on model compression and efficient hardware to squeeze as much processing as possible from embedded devices constrained by power and heat. Qualcomm A.I. Research is also targeting more data efficient models in machine learning, as well as system architecture problems – like sensor fusion and multimodal learning – and device personalization.