00:00 Speaker A
Edge AI is like on-device AI versus cloud AI. Should people think of edge AI as a complement to the cloud or a replacement? Is it a replacement or a complement?
00:16 Akash
Yes, yes, if you really look at how computing has evolved over the past few years, you do some computing on your phone and the rest on the cloud. Edge AI is no exception. You will perform some AI workloads at the edge and others in the cloud. It depends on what you want to do and where the context and data are available. If you think about an agent AI conversation, you want to talk to the device and get some information out of it, glasses are a good example.
00:48 Akash
Um, if I were wearing smart glasses like the Meta Ray Ban, I could look at something and easily ask the question, what is this? The model must then understand the problem. It has to understand what the camera is looking at. So it can feed data into the model. The model will then determine whether the question can be answered at the edge itself, or does it need to be moved to the cloud? And it has almost nothing to do with the user. It doesn’t matter whether it happens at the edge or in the cloud. This is essentially leveraging sensor information that is only available at the edge to enable this unique use case. I think as you expand it from consumer use cases like this to enterprise use cases and then to industrial automotive, robotics use cases, Qualcomm’s technology is going to be in every device, and we just think we’re at the beginning of the next wave of AI innovation that’s going to start at the edge and continue into the cloud.
01:52 Speaker A
Akash, do you think we are on the cusp of a wearables revolution? I feel like we’ve done a lot of trying to get wearables to really take off, but they haven’t taken off on a large scale yet. Has the situation changed now?
02:12 Akash
Yeah, I think it’s definitely changing. So imagine you have a device on you that can see what you see, hear what you hear, and you can have an agent AI conversation with it. So, I think glasses are an easy way for people to understand this concept. Um, but really think of it as something broader than just glasses. It could be a watch, earbuds with a camera, or a necklace.
02:47 Akash
But in each case, your device has a camera with the same field of view as you. It hears the same sounds as you. It learns what’s going on in your day as you go about it and then actually be able to answer questions later in the day. I mean, a great use case that I heard about recently is one of our partners in India is implementing a payment use case where you just put on your glasses and look at the QR code and say pay 100 rupees for that code. It’s going to read the code, go into your wallet and make a payment, it’s something that’s very natural for the user and uh I think when you bring those use cases together, we expect this revolution to take off.
03:41 Speaker A
I don’t know that there are situations where I wish there was more friction between myself and making a large purchase. But I believe you can incorporate these things into it. Well, I’m curious about the competition in this space. Obviously, Qualcomm is already the leader in smartphone chips or device chips. Of course, as you know, there are other chip manufacturers that are getting into this space. Nvidia is also in this space. Do you see Nvidia as a direct competitor in edge computing, or do you see you operating in a different segment?
04:14 Akash
Yes, I think Qualcomm has a very significant advantage when you think about edge computing. A big factor about edge devices is that they are battery powered. Because of that, you need something, you need a chip that can achieve really high performance at very low power consumption. This is Qualcomm’s DNA. We already do this in mobile phones. We’ve done this in a variety of other devices and, you know, while we do have competitors, we’re clearly the leader in this space and we want to continue to be the leader in this space. I think the technology mix that Qualcomm has is unique and well suited for its devices. So, uh, I’m very hopeful and optimistic about what we can do in the future.
