Qualcomm this week expanded its Qualcomm Vision Intelligence Platform with a new smart camera processor that adds more support for artificial intelligence analysis to smart camera IoT networks and video surveillance-as-a-service becomes more common.
The Qualcomm QCS7230 processor (product specs can be found here) was announced during the International Security Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas, and aims to bring high-powered AI inference to the edge. It supports high-end cameras–those with 4K 120 Hz UHD ad scenarios where some multi-camera AI processing is involved (Qualcomm also has processors supporting more premium cameras (8K) and lower-end models.)
The processor launch comes as many companies, cities, safety agencies and other government entities have started to look at how to support larger volumes of intelligent image processing and analysis on devices or at other edge network locations.
For Qualcomm the solution is another proof point in the company’s effort to broaden from cellular to new market segments.As part of that, the company has created an IoT-as-a-service platform that addresses a variety of smart city and smart building use cases, video surveillance being just one.
“We have diversified beyond the smartphone, and IoT is actually a huge part of that whole diversification story,” said Siddhartha Franco, director, business development, Qualcomm Technologies. “There’s a big shift that's happening today in the security industry, and that's a shift from the traditional model of VMS, which stands for video management software, to video surveillance-as-a-service (VSaaS).”
That evolution is enabled in part by “plug-and-play” cameras that allow users to greatly and quickly expand smart camera networks, sometimes with multi-camera devices that have additional sensors collecting their own data. There are now about 1 billion surveillance cameras operating worldwide, Qualcomm said. With all of the data capable of being collected by increasingly large smart camera networks, “we see camera architectures evolving to being able to do more multi-sensing sensor fusion on the edge,” Franco said.
The new SoC makes it easier to set up and manage these increasingly large and complex networks, representing a migration away from having to set up smart camera networks by deploying devices and software one site at a time. Franco said the new processor fits with Qualcomm’s concept of using an “AI box,” an edge appliance that processes data from cameras.
“This AI box will take the streams from the cameras, decode them, understand them, and run analytics on each of these,” he said. “These boxes are capable of handling multiple cameras together. We are helping businesses to quickly transition from the VMS to the VSaaS models.”
RELATED: Qualcomm raises curtain on third smart cities accelerate event