How This Strategic Move Opens the Door for Startups and Innovators to Build Smarter Robots with Cutting-Edge Chips
The corporate stated Tuesday that it is buying Arduino, an electronics maker whose cheap programmable circuit boards and computer systems are frequent in {hardware} startups and robotics labs for prototyping.
Qualcomm did not announce a worth for the transaction, however stated the Italy-based firm would change into an impartial subsidiary.
The deal provides Qualcomm direct entry to the tinkerers, hobbyists and corporations on the lowest ranges of the robotics trade. Arduino merchandise cannot be used to construct business merchandise however, with chips preinstalled, they’re in style for testing out a brand new concept or proving an idea.
Qualcomm hopes that Arduino can assist it acquire loyalty and legitimacy amongst startups and builders as robots and different units more and more want extra highly effective chips for synthetic intelligence. When a few of these experiments change into merchandise, Qualcomm desires to promote them its chips commercially.
“You begin to transfer in the direction of prototyping, proof of ideas, and when you’re prepared, you may go business, which is one thing we’re clearly very acquainted with,” stated Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm’s normal supervisor for automotive, industrial, and embedded Web of Issues, or IoT, in an interview.
Qualcomm can be in search of to diversify its income away from a focus in cellular chips and modems because the smartphone market stalls and as Apple begins to maneuver to its personal modem chips.
Nonetheless, within the most up-to-date quarter, Qualcomm’s IoT enterprise, which incorporates a lot of its present chips that can be utilized for industrial or robotics merchandise, and its automotive enterprise accounted for a mixed 30% of total income from chip gross sales.
To this point, it has been tough for smaller builders to get entry to Qualcomm chips as a result of they sometimes get bought in massive portions to established enterprises. Rival Nvidia, nevertheless, has bought developer kits for its robotic chips that may be straight bought from retailers for as little as $249, and has stated that robotics is the corporate’s greatest progress alternative after AI.
Duggal stated Qualcomm bought two different firms previously 12 months, Foundries.io and Edge Impulse, in an effort to change into extra important to robotics builders. He added that Qualcomm hopes to ultimately assist energy humanoid robots, that are much like self-driving automobiles in how a lot AI computing energy they require.
Tuesday’s announcement stated Arduino will, for the primary time, launch a board with a Qualcomm chip. It is referred to as the Uno Q and, priced at $45 to $55, comes geared up with a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor.
Qualcomm’s chip can run Linux, together with Arduino software program, and may even do laptop imaginative and prescient, which deciphers what a digicam sees and interprets it into software program.
Present Arduino boards, which use lighter processors referred to as microcontrollers, aren’t highly effective sufficient to do quite a lot of cutting-edge AI. These boards use chips from firms together with STMicroelectronics, Renesas Electronics, Microchip and NXP Semiconductors. Qualcomm will proceed to promote these chips by way of Arduino.
That is a part of Qualcomm’s plan to not make any important modifications to Arduino’s operations, administration or its developer neighborhood.
“My success standards is that the Arduino ecosystem does not even really feel that there’s any change in possession right here,” Duggal stated.
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