Hot on the heels of the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii last week comes news that the next iteration of HoloLens will be an “Always Connected PC,” powered by a Snapdragon 850. As noted by a report by Neowin, Microsoft HoloLens “relies heavily on its built-in Holographic Processing Unit (HPU); the last generation actually used an Intel Atom for the CPU.” Since Snapdragon 850 has an AI coprocessor built-in, the new HoloLens will work faster and more efficiently that the previous generation and HoloLens will be a true “Always Connected PC.”
In addition to benefiting from ARM’s “instant-on” feature, the Snapdragon 850 already has a Snapdragon X20 4G LTE modem to connect to the internet at speeds of up to 1.2 GB/s. As we already know Microsoft plans to release the next version of HoloLens will be released in Q2 2019. Microsoft is invested heavily in the enterprise market with HoloLens and the ability for HoloLens to connect via 4G LTE will make it easy to deploy for companies.
At Build 2018, Microsoft announced Project Kinect for Azure, which would use Kinect’s technology in the next version of the HoloLens. Project Kinect for Azure, coupled with the Snapdragon 850 and an HPU with AI coprocessor will make the HoloLens V2 a formidable AR Windows 10 PC. The HoloLens V2 would also use Windows Core OS which would allow for better performance than other Windows PCs using the Snapdragon 850.
At the Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm unveiled its new line of Snapdragon 8cx chips for Windows 10 PCs. Until HoloLens V2 is released, we will have to wait and see what exactly the new HoloLens will be able to do using the Snapdragon 850. Stay tuned.
