AMD to make Magic Leap soc for AR device

AMD and Magic Leap are working together on a soc for an unannounced augmented reality device. AMD will provide a custom processor. It is not yet known when the finished product will be released on the market.

Magic Leap and AMD say they are working together on technology that ‘visualizes virtual content and information’ and the soc is part of this. The unspecified AR device is intended for enterprise users; Since a year ago, the American AR company only focuses on professional users, no longer at consumers.

AMD is going to deliver a semi-custom system-on-a-chip. These are existing chipsets with specific adjustments for, in this case, Magic Leap glasses. It is not known on which existing soc the new chip will be based and what exactly the adjustments consist of. Magic Leap does emphasize the importance for AR of combining cpu, gpu and machine learning computing power in a single low-consumption soc.

Magic Leap is currently still working with Nvidia for the Magic Leap One, among others. Those AR glasses are powered by a Parker soc, a chipset that, according to Nvidia, is mainly intended for autonomously driving vehicles. The processor is equipped with two Denver cores and four Arm Cortex A57 cores. An Nvidia Pascal GPU with 256 CUDA cores provides the graphics processing power.

Earlier this year Magic Leap revealed the arrival of the Magic Leap 2, but for now it is quiet around those AR glasses. The product should be released in the last quarter of this year as part of an early-adopter program. Few specifications of the Magic Leap 2 are known, except for some information about the weight and the field-of-view. There is a possibility that AMD will supply the processor for that product.