To build an ecosystem for AI PCs, Qualcomm will open-source its self-developed edge AI models to developers

Recently, Microsoft teamed up with Qualcomm to launch the Copilot+PC series of products, ushering in a new era of AI PC. To build an ecosystem for AI PC, Qualcomm has taken new actions by opening up AI models to assist software developers in creating AI applications based on the Snapdragon X Elite platform.

On June 22nd local time, Qualcomm announced on social media that the computing models of Qualcomm AI Hub are now open to everyone. Registration is now available to run, download, and deploy optimized AI models on the Snapdragon X Elite platform.

Opening up computing models on AI Hub is seen as one of Qualcomm's further efforts to promote AI PC.

Recently, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X Elite platform at the Taipei International Computer Show (Computex). The Snapdragon X Elite is not only an important milestone for Qualcomm in the PC market, but also a concentrated showcase of its technical strength. The perfect combination of NPU, CPU, and GPU gives it an astonishing overall AI computing power of 75 Tops, making it stand out in the industry.

However, at the Computex conference, Qualcomm almost exclusively emphasized the AI capabilities of this chip series, with minimal introduction to the CPU and GPU. To fully leverage the powerful performance of Qualcomm's Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU), matching AI application software is required.

Therefore, Qualcomm has developed, optimized, and validated AI models for its 45 TOPS Hexagon NPU. Software developers can access these optimized AI models on Qualcomm's AI Hub and quickly build artificial intelligence applications.

Qualcomm AI Hub offers a variety of AI models covering image classification, object detection, semantic segmentation, and generative AI, among others. Additionally, this platform provides convenient tools and documentation to help developers easily deploy AI models in applications such as vision, audio, and speech.

To streamline the development process, software developers can filter models by tags such as "backbone," "base," "quantization," and "real-time." Furthermore, Qualcomm AI Hub provides detailed code and examples to guide developers in deploying and running AI models on Snapdragon X Elite processor series devices.

By opening up AI models, Qualcomm hopes to see a large number of AI applications based on the Snapdragon X Elite platform emerge within the next year, stimulating market demand for Qualcomm's AI PC. Tech media Tom's Hardware analysis shows that Qualcomm focused the launch event of Snapdragon X Elite on artificial intelligence rather than high-end CPUs and GPUs in part to attract the attention of software developers. Qualcomm believes that AI will be the killer feature of PCs in 2024.

Tom's Hardware indicates that besides providing AI models, Qualcomm also ensures that AI applications built on these models can achieve optimal performance on the Snapdragon X Elite platform. This move may give Qualcomm an advantage over competitors AMD and Intel, as both AMD and Intel are set to release AI processors with high-performance NPUs.

AI PCs are becoming the next focus of AI trading. Recently, Goldman Sachs stated in a research report that the technology hardware industry has completely emerged from the pandemic escalation period, and with the advent of the AI wave, upcoming PC and mobile device models will feature significant new functionalities such as AI enhancement, improved security, and stronger computing capabilities, ushering in a new wave of upgrades.

Recent personal computer sales have been declining, but analysts predict that this trend is expected to end next year as AI chips begin to be integrated into new personal computers and laptops, reigniting consumer interest in upgrades and making PC upgrades the "next AI trade"