Microsoft, Intel, & others Tech Giants launches IoT standards group: Open Connectivity Foundation

Giants of the tech world are banding together to found a new group to support the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) industry.

The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) is touted as an open IoT standards group to unify standards, expedite innovation, and “create IoT solutions and devices that work seamlessly together,” according to a press release. Founding members include Microsoft, Cisco, Electrolux, General Electric, Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, ARRIS, and CableLabs, who will work together to create specifications and protocols to ensure devices from a myriad of manufacturers work in harmony.

The Internet of Things is a major driving force in creative labs around the world. At CES last month, Samsung unveiled an eclectic mix of products, from smart fridges to giant video walls and beyond, and at the upcoming Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, a Samsung spin-off company is debuting smart shoes.

Elsewhere, Microsoft is making a big IoT play with Windows 10 and Azure, as the company looks to build an operating system that delivers access to universal apps and driver models that work across any device, from fridges and ATMs to industrial robotics. And earlier today, Volvo announced its intentions to create the first properly keyless cars — vehicles that can be unlocked, started, and managed through a smartphone app.

It’s clearer than ever that the Internet of Things is pushing hard to shake off its gimmicky reputation and become a genuine thing that’s embraced. But well-defined and open standards are key to its success — devices and software from different manufacturers and developers have to be compatible.
The OCF is the successor to the existing Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), which was launched back in 2014. The OIC was in competition with another group called the Allseen alliance, which consists of members such as Microsoft, Electrolux, and Qualcomm who are now in the OCF — but we’re assured that the OCF is not a merger between these other two groups.




Source: Venture Beat

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Letv Le Max Pro: World's first phone with a Snapdragon 820 chipset

Just a few years ago, we might have scoffed at the idea of buying a smartphone from a Chinese OEM. Now, with companies like Huawei and ZTE showing us that smartphone pedigree matters less than ambition and execution, things are totally different. That's exactly the opening China's LeTV is trying to capitalize on with its new Le Max Pro.

At the ongoing CES 2016 press event, Qualcomm shared an interesting bit of news regarding its next-gen Snapdragon 820 SoC. While there were rumors that the chipset will be exclusive to Samsung’s Galaxy S7 till April, Qualcomm chief executive Steven Mollenkopf announced that China’s Letv Le Max Pro will be the first handset to be powered by the Snapdragon 820 chipset.
Not only is the world's first phone to run Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chipset, it's also the company's first attempt to break into the absolutely insane US market.

Apart from the Snapdragon 820, the Le Max Pro will also pack features such as Qualcomm's Snapdragon Sense ID ultrasonic fingerprint technology that's claimed to be more secure than capacitive sensors. The chipset will also boast next-gen Wi-Fi 802.11ad connectivity option. Unfortunately, LeTV hasn't confirmed all the specifications of the Le Max Pro and we will have to wait for the unveiling of the handset.LeTV is expected to start selling the Le Max Pro in the first half of 2016.

To recap, the Snapdragon 820 marks a major departure from the current generation of mobile chipsets. It features custom-designed 2.2GHz quad-core Kryo processor paired with a powerful, yet energy efficient Adreno 530 GPU, the company claims. Other features include LTE Cat.12 and tri-band Wi-Fi connectivity, and Quick Charge 3.0.

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Microsoft beats Google, Intel, Tencent, and Qualcomm in image recognition competition

Microsoft Research has come in first place in several categories for the sixth annual ImageNet image recognition competition. Technology from Microsoft was able to outperform systems from Google, Intel, Qualcomm, and Tencent, as well as entries from startups and academic labs, according to the results.

The winning system from Microsoft researchers Kaiming He, Xiangyu Zhang, Shaoqing Ren, and Jian Sun is called “Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition.” It will be detailed in an upcoming paper, according to a Microsoft blog post.

The technology is notable partly because of its complexity. “We train neural networks with depth of over 150 layers,” the team wrote. “We propose a 'deep residual learning' framework that eases the optimization and convergence of extremely deep networks. Our 'deep residual nets' enjoy accuracy gains when the networks are substantially deeper than those used previously. Such accuracy gains are not witnessed for many common networks when going deeper.”

This research area has become quite popular among technology companies, which are seeking to improve their own internal systems as well as consumer-facing products. The broad category of deep learning, which is at the core of these high-performing networks, involves training artificial neural networks on large sets of data, such as photographs, and then showing them new data to receive inferences.

Microsoft has humorously demonstrated its capabilities with this type of technology with the “How Old Do I Look?” and “How's My Moustache Doing?” apps. And it has been commercializing image recognition technology through Microsoft Research's Project Oxford initiative.

The big competition at ImageNet requires entries to correctly locate and classify objects in 100,000 photographs from Flickr and search engines into 1,000 object categories (tarantula, iPod, mosque, toyshop, modem, and so on) with as few errors as possible.

Microsoft's winning entry had a classification error rate of 3.5 percent and a localization error rate of 9 percent.

In previous years Google, startup Clarifai, and NEC have come out in front when it comes to classification.

Also this year the Microsoft system from He, Zhang, Ren, and Sun came in first place for an ImageNet competition around object detection.

“We even didn't believe this single idea could be so significant,” Sun is quoted as saying in the Microsoft blog post.

Baidu does not show up in this year's rankings. The company made more submissions than were permitted and ultimately apologized and fired the team leader who directed juniors to make the unacceptable submissions.

For this competition IBM provided Nvidia GPUs (graphical processing units) in the SoftLayer public cloud for participating teams to use.



Source :Venture Beat

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Qualcomm's new Quick Charge will take batteries from 0 to 80 percent in 35 minutes

Fast charging is an increasingly widespread and popular addition to modern smartphones. Almost every new Android handset features some sort of solution for giving it a rapid injection of energy, and one of the most popular varieties among them is Qualcomm's Quick Charge. It's an option built into the company's current line of Snapdragon processors, and it's getting an upgrade to version 3.0 with the 2016 family, headlined by theSnapdragon 820.

A new Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage (INOV) algorithm will allow portable devices to "determine what power level to request at any point in time for optimum power transfer, while maximizing efficiency." Together with a series of other advancements, this will result in 38 percent more efficient charging than the second-generation Quick Charge, and a doubling of charging speed from the original Quick Charge 1. In practical terms, says Qualcomm, this will mean that the typical smartphone can be recharged from a flat battery all the way to 80 percent in 35 minutes.

Qualcomm also notes that it's implemented "additional steps to help protect battery cycle life," so its new solution should be both more efficient and more forgiving on the battery. The Snapdragon 820 chipset will be joined by the Snapdragon 620, 618, 617, and 430 in supporting the latest variety of Quick Charge. They are available to Qualcomm's hardware partners today and will be making their debut in devices coming in 2016.

Source : The Verge 

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Qualcomm introduces the Snapdragon Flight, a brain for smarter, more powerful drones

Qualcomm wants to be for drones what it's been for smartphones. The company behind the ubiquitous Snapdragon system on a chip (SoC) for phones recently announced the Snapdragon Flight, a development platform for drones.

The Snapdragon Flight includes a board based on the Snapdragon 801 processor, which can be found in the likes of the HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S5, and Sony Xperia Z3. It also features a quad-core 2.26GHz processor, 4K video processing, dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, computer vision, support for real-time flight control systems, a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, and support for quick recharging, according to Wired.

“The integrated design is engineered to reduce the size, weight, and power consumption leading to longer flight times and additional safety,”according to Qualcomm, which announced the Snapdragon Flight at the Qualcomm: Accelerating Robotics event.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) built by China-based drone manufacturer Yuneec will be the first to use the Snapdragon Flight, with a 2016 target launch. Qualcomm is also in discussions with other drone manufacturers about using the Snapdragon Flight, according to Raj Talluri, SVP of product management at the company.

“We first concepted Snapdragon Flight more than a year ago,” Talluri told Wired. “It grew out of conversations and requests we were having with customers, as well as a need we were seeing in the market.”

Qualcomm's entry into the drone space could help its overall business, as the chipmaker facesincreasing competition from the likes of Samsung and Intel in the smartphone market.

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The next Snapdragon will double your device's battery life

Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 820 chip, which will include the company's latest Kyro CPU, is set to double the speeds and battery life of the current-gen Snapdragon 810.

"With Kryo CPU and Snapdragon 820, you can expect up to 2 times the performance and up to 2 times the power efficiency when compared with the Snapdragon 810 processor," Qualcomm said on its website.

To achieve this massive performance booth, the company says it has custom designed each core on the Snapdragon 820 system-on-chip (SoC) so that onboard functional cores, like the CPU or GPU, can be combined for different tasks "more effectively as a comprehensive system with other onboard components."

The Kyro CPU, which is being manufactured on the latest 14nm FinFET technology, is the company's first custom-designed 64-bit quad-core CPU made specifically for the Snapdragon 820.

It has also developed a system manager for the Snapdragon 820 SoC, the Qualcomm Symphony System Manager.

"While some processors limit their system management to CPU cores, Symphony is designed to manage the entire system-on-chip in different configurations so that the most efficient and effective combination of processors and specialized cores are chosen to get the job done as quickly as possible, with the least amount of power," Qualcomm said.

Unfortunately, Qualcomm hasn't revealed when we can expect to see the next-gen chip in our phones and wearables, though we don't expect to see it until next year.


Source : Tech radar

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Qualcomm's new mobile chip will learn how to identify malicious apps

 

In recent months it seems like machine learning has been primarily used to make nightmarish eye-riddled hellscapes and misidentify Star Trek planetsas waffle irons. But we're not just teaching machines to identify patterns for our own amusement — they could make also make our lives easier. Qualcomm's new Smart Protect technology could be one such example. The chip maker today detailed the new feature, available on its upcoming Snapdragon 820 processor: ahardware-based anti-malware solution that Qualcomm says will monitor the behavior of apps on a device, detecting and classifying any that are deemed suspicious or anomalous.

Qualcomm's new chip will monitor for malicious activity

Currently most anti-malware apps available on mobile devices rely on a list of known threats, meaning that malicious software can be fairly easily tweaked to bypass their security measures. Rather than relying on these lists to identify nefarious software, Smart Protect will monitor what's actually happening on your smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device, making it possible to warn users of unexpected activity. Asaf Ashkenazi, director of Qualcomm's product management, says users will get "nearly instantaneous notifications of detected privacy violations and malicious activity," and because the technology is baked into the hardware itself, these reports will be possible offline and without draining your phone's battery excessively.

The feature is set to become available on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processors when they launch next year. The company says it's already working with security firms, including Avast, AVG, and Lookout, using an API to tie Smart Protect into their commercially available apps, meaning users will be able to take advantage of its capabilities.

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Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Could Be Unveiled On August 11

Qualcomm is facing some difficult times, despite being one of the most popular manufacturers of mobile processors, their most recent high-end offering, the Snapdragon 810 had some issues that are still controversial. In fact, since the 810 processor was in early production, rumors about the high temperatures it reached began to emerge. Those rumors were denied and some companies started to include this processor in their flagship devices, including some by LG, HTC and Sony. Even as the company has released other versions of the processor, the issue is still present. Under this premise, users were always concerned about the temperature of their devices while running some apps and while in most cases this won't be an issue, it seems consistent reports note that this processor does heat up more than those made by the competition.

While we know that Qualcomm is working on a new high-end offering called Snapdragon 820, companies that will release new flagship devices in the second half of the year are rumored to use the current one, even though it is said that the company has sent some samples to some manufacturers of the newer one. Recent reports suggest that the company could finally unveil the Snapdragon 820 on August 11 at a conference in Los Angeles. What we know so far is that its 64-bit cores will be custom built, called Kryo, instead of using ARM's Cortex architecture, plus it would be built using a FinFET process.

Now, there are new rumors about the specifications of the Snapdragon 820 which now seem likely to be confirmed next week. Apparently the new chipset will have a quad-core configuration, two of them clocked at 1.7 GHz and the other two will run at 2.2 GHz. The graphics will be powered by the Adreno 530 GPU at 650 Mhz. An LTE Cat. 10 modem will be included and the chipset will support the faster LPDDR4 RAM while keeping an eye on support for 4K video. The company would probably want this new processor to be released as soon as possible to recover its reputation, but rumors indicate that the first devices to use it first re unlikely to available sooner than March of next year.

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Qualcomm tech could bring wireless charging to iPhones, iPads

Apple's iPhones and iPads are generally great at what they do but they can't do everything that competing devices can. One of those things is use a wireless charging pad, eliminating the need to plug in a cable to top off the battery.

It could be that Apple simply isn't interested in adding the feature, although it do with the Apple Watch. Even if Apple wanted to, however, it faces a challenge. Up to now, wireless charging hasn't worked though metal and Apple devices have aluminum backs.

Qualcomm has an answer to that challenge though: The chip company announced its WiPower technology that wirelessly charges a battery even if the phone or tablet has a metal back.

"WiPower has added the ability to have the device itself made of metal. This advancement maintains WiPower's existing ability to charge devices requiring up to 22 watts today, at speeds equal to or faster when compared to other wireless charging technologies."

Aside from the ability the charge through metal, WiPower charging pads can supply energy to multiple devices at one time.

In theory then, you could charge both a WiPower-enabled iPad and iPhone at the same time. The solution can also use a Bluetooth Smart connection to determine the proper charging requirements for devices.

While that all sounds great, there's one downside: WiPower is based on the Rezence standard, whic uses different technology than the more commonly used Qi standard. Indeed, the Apple Watch uses the latter.

That does't preclude Apple from moving forward with Qualcomm's wireless charging solution -- or designing one of its own, of course -- but it could bring some consumer confusion and incompatibilities between charging pads.

Then again, its not likely that most iPhone or iPad owners have a Qi charger to begin with, save for the one included with the Apple Watch. And that one wouldn't provide enough power to quickly charge a larger mobile device.

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