Qualcomm reveals why their chipsets don’t need special vision chips for Tango

Google’s initial Tango prototypes used special vision processing chips to power the augmented reality experience. That said, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro — which was announced earlier this month a mere Snapdragon 652 chipset — doesn’t need such a chip: it does all the heavy lifting on its own.

Qualcomm attributes this to their chipsets’ heterogeneous processing, which can put non-computing chips like image and sensor processing to task for general CPU duties. As a result, their chip has enough power — and then some — to handle a full Tango experience. The only extra things a device needs are the depth-sensing cameras.

This combination allows Tango to make full use of device sensors and cameras with less than 10% of the power it takes for a normal app to run. With this explanation, Qualcomm today confirmed that the Snapdragon 820 and higher will support Tango, as well as future 600-series Snapdragon chipsets.

[via ArsTechnica]