Microsoft adds Snapdragon 850 and LTE to new HoloLens

Microsoft would be planning to build the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850-soc into the new version of the HoloLens, Neowin reports. This soc has the Snapdragon X20 modem, which makes it possible to establish an LTE connection.

The website Neowin says it has learned from multiple undisclosed sources that the latest iteration of the HoloLens will be getting a Snapdragon 850. This is in contrast to previous reports that were based on the Snapdragon XR1 soc, which is optimized for vr and ar applications.

If the rumors about a Snapdragon 850 are correct, that means that the new version of the HoloLens, which is expected to be released sometime in the second quarter of 2019, can be considered an Always Connected PC. This is a Qualcomm term that stands for a device that always has an internet connection in the form of Wi-Fi and a cellular connection. It is not yet clear whether the new HoloLens will actually achieve the maximum speeds of the Snapdragon X20 modem, namely 1.2 Gbit/s.

Qualcomm recently announced the Snapdragon 8cx, an ARM processor that, unlike the Snapdragon 850, was developed specifically for PCs and is no longer based on mobile variants. Despite this, the new HoloLens is rumored not to have this new Snapdragon soc.

Neowin argues that this may be explained by the fact that the current HoloLens is heavily dependent on a holographic processing unit in addition to the Intel Atom CPU, which in the new HoloLens will also receive an AI-coprocessor for the implementation of deep neural networks, to enable machine vision. to be handled efficiently. Another explanation is that the Snapdragon 8cx is simply too late for the release of the new Microsoft HoloLens, which will be mainly aimed at business applications.