Qualcomm has announced the launch of a new family of Internet of Things (IoT) focused system-on-chips (SoC) with embedded image signal processing and artificial intelligence capabilities, the first in a new range of parts for what it calls the Qualcomm Vision Intelligence Platform.

“Our goal is to make IoT devices significantly smarter as we help customers bring powerful on-device intelligence, camera processing and security. AI is already enabling cameras with object detection, tracking, classification and facial recognition, robots that avoid obstacles autonomously, and action cameras that learn and generate a video summary of your latest adventure, but this is really just the beginning,” says Joseph Bousaba, vice president of product management at Qualcomm. “The Qualcomm Vision Intelligence Platform is the culmination of years of advanced research and development that brings together breakthrough advancements in camera, on-device AI and heterogeneous computing. The platform is a premier launchpad for manufacturers and developers to create a new world of intelligent IoT devices.”

Initially available in two models – the QCS603 with 64-bit four-core big.LITTLE Kryo CPU running at 1.7/1.6GHz and the QCS605 with eight-core Kryo CPU running at 2.5GHz/1.7GHz – the new SoCs include a neural processing engine offering 2.1 trillion operations per second (TOPS) in a 1W power envelope, a Qualcomm Hexagon 685 Vector Processor digital signal processor (DSP), Adreno 615 GPU, dual 14-bit Qualcomm Spectra 270 image signal processors (ISPs), and are built on a 10nm low-power process.

The parts are sampling now, the company has confirmed, with Kedacom and Ricoh Theta named as the first customers to be building products around the new platform. More information is available on the official website.