Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 platform with 5G, advanced features goes official with Quest 2 VR

Qualcomm’s new chip delivers 2x the CPU and GPU performance, 4x more video bandwidth, 6x higher resolution and 11x AI improvement.

Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Platform commercially launched (Qualcomm )

One of the biggest highlights of Oculus' latest Quest 2 VR is the latest Extended Reality (XR) chip from Qualcomm. Called Snapdragon XR2, it is also touted as the world's 5G-enabled XR platform. Qualcomm says the new chip brings a variety of custom features including many firsts that are optimised across Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR).

The new XR chip is said to deliver twice the CPU and GPU performance compared to the predecessor which powered the original Oculus Quest VR headset. Qualcomm also shed light on how its new chip amplifies the performance on the latest gen Quest 2 VR.

The company said that the chip powers highest resolution display on a Qualcomm headset by delivering up to 50% more pixels than the predecessor. For AI, it has become 11x better than the last model.

The Snapdragon XR2 display panel delivers up to 3K by 3K resolution per eye at 90 frames per second (fps). It is also Qualcomm's first XR platform to support 8K 360-degree videos at 60fps.

“The Snapdragon XR2 Platform allows more perception algorithms to work concurrently with the many other tasks, resulting in more immersive experiences for the end-user,” said Qualcomm in a release.

The latest XR platform from Qualcomm comes with an Engine for Visual Analytics (EVA) which aims to offload key VR-related tasks for tracking. This will ultimately help achieve better latency and power consumption optimisation.

A new compute architecture under the hood helps Oculus Quest 2 deliver better battery life. Another highlight of the chip is Wi-Fi 6 support for seamless and faster connectivity. For audio, it has a built always-on, low power Qualcomm Hexagon DSP which brings support for features like voice activation and context detection.