Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820A car chip has machine intelligence
On top of powering navigation, entertainment and LTE, the 820A learns over time.
It's about time for a new automative chip from Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 602A was announced way back in 2014, so it's not a huge surprise to see the company unveil its new Snapdragon 820A chip here at CES. Naturally, it brings all of the benefits of the company's high-end Snapdragon 820 chip, including the new 64-bit Kryo CPU, Adreno 530 GPU and LTE speeds of up to 600 Mbps. Car makers can also tap into the 820's Zeroth machine intelligence capabilities to build navigation and infotainment products that actually learn over time (something NVIDIA is also touting with its PX 2 car computer).
For the most part, everything about the 820A is a major step up from the 602A. It's got more computing power overall, more support for a wide variety of sensors and it'll be an even more powerful networking hub. But Qualcomm isn't getting rid of its older chip — in fact, Audi plans to integrate the 602A across its upcoming 2017 lineup.
The 820A will support QNX, CarPlay and Android Auto, and Qualcomm says car makers will also be able to send out updates with hardware and software sent over the air (no surprise there). The company expects to send out hardware samples in the first quarter, which means we won't see the chip implemented in cars until the end of the year. We'll be checking out some 820A concept vehicles here at CES, so check back soon for more details.
