What happens when two GPUs go head-to-head in an AI race? Tech it Out with The Six Five’s host Diana Blass inside Qualcomm‘s booth at Mobile World Congress, where she had the chance to check out the latest in on-device AI and connectivity with Qualcomm’s Durga Malladi.
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Transcript:
Diana Blass: What happens when-
Crowd participant: So NPU versus NPU.
Diana Blass: … two devices featuring on-device AI are tasked to generate an image with stable diffusion?
Crowd participant: How about a dog jumping in the ocean?
Diana Blass: Sounds like a happy dog.
Crowd participant: On your mark. Get set.
Diana Blass: Snapdragon X Elite up against Intel Core Ultra.
Durga Malladi: You can see that that image already popped up. Still waiting over here. It took about 20-odd seconds for that.
Diana Blass: Of course, this is a test conducted by Qualcomm, and we don’t have all the parameters used for the head-to-head comparison, but we do know this.
Durga Malladi: Our NPU is designed specifically for AI.
Diana Blass: Hey, everybody, tech it out. I’m here at Qualcomm’s booth at Mobile World Congress with Durga Malladi. So a lot of great demos going on in your booth.
Durga Malladi: That’s right. So as you can see behind me over here, when we started talking about generative AI running on device, we were focused on commercializing on handsets in the beginning. So our partners are showcasing what they can do with generative AI running on the device with assistance and ways of editing images and videos and generating new kinds of images. And what I’d like to do at this point in time is talk about what else are we doing in terms of commercializing and making it easier for developers to adopt generative AI.
This is a way for developers to go to a website that we have. It’s our AI hub. You can pick any model that you want. These models are fully curated and optimized to run on Snapdragon devices, our platforms. The best part of it is, for a third-party developer, when they pick a certain model and they want to build an application, well, they need access to a device to test it. We provide that access. This is a cloud-hosted device form. So an application developer can write some code, they can test it on the device form, and now that it works, they can finish that application, download the model, bake it into the application, and then deploy it on play store.
You take a picture and you are simply saying, “Describe what you see.” Now if you think about it from a AI standpoint, it has to understand two things, the picture and what the question is. Now we can go from here to anything that you want. For example, here is a chat that says, “Okay, create a recipe for me based upon these ingredients.” Now, how did you come up with those ingredients? You actually take a picture saying, “Okay, I have maybe a few vegetables here and there and something else.” You take that picture and you say, “Create a recipe for me.” You have to understand the picture. You have to understand the question, and then a recipe gets generated.
In a way, it’s nothing but mimicking what we as humans do. We use a combination of our sight, which is vision, and language as we speak. We’re trying to put all of that together and trying to blend it into some really, really interesting applications.
Diana Blass: And it’s not just smartphones. It could be used in connected cars?
Durga Malladi: That is correct. So we started off with smartphones just because a lot of the emphasis in the last year was about these commercial launches with our partners. But we’re doing a lot of these generative AI applications now on compute, automotive and IOT platforms.
X80 5G Modem-RF platform is the latest one that we announced in terms of a series of Modem-RF platforms that we’ve had in the past. It has a ton of features. From a connectivity standpoint, we have our 5G advanced features. It’s state-of-the-art in terms of how many different carriers you can aggregate, integrated satellite communications capability, six receive antennas, and up to multiple carriers that you can aggregate.
So it provides better coverage, better capacity for network operators. And we have been integrating AI into our 5G Modem-RF platforms as well. So in this case, what are the kinds of user benefits that you can expect using AI? One, significantly better location accuracy, higher data rates as you’re downloading something, much better latency. And when you use millimeter wave, you want to have extremely high data rates associated with that. So the idea is the longer the range of millimeter wave is, the better it is for you.
Diana Blass: And so we’re showing how it’s connecting to devices here. Is there a chip inside the device that’s communicating with the platform? How does it work?
Durga Malladi: So from a network standpoint, when we go into AI, the network actually doesn’t know what is happening inside the device itself from an AI perspective. The device figures out where it is. The base station towers, actually the radio signals come in from there. And then it’s the device that does a few more things in terms of making sure that you optimize the performance. So that’s how it works.
Diana Blass: Well, thank you so much for your time today. Definitely a lot to tech out here at Qualcomm’s booth at MWC. And for more coverage here, be sure to follow along at The Six Five.
Author Information
Diana Blass is a journalist with a background in technology news and analysis. Her work has appeared on Fox Television Stations, The Discovery Channel, CRN, Light Reading, and other Informa-owned media brands. In addition to her work at The Six Five, she manages Diana Blass Productions, where she develops and produces digital documentaries, podcasts, and commercials for media and corporate brands.
