Qualcomm has declared it is shifting its focus from offering chips solely for communications devices and doubling down on its efforts to assist AI workloads.

The firm is transitioning to getting  an “intelligent edge computing” business, Alex Katouzian, a senior vice president at Qualcomm, claimed through a keynote speech at the Computex present in Taipei Tuesday.

AI workloads need a good deal of compute ability and in February, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon X75, its most recent 5G modem part that the business said will be the world’s 1st modem-RF process for 5G-Superior — a established of specs created to improve speed, increase protection, and boost mobility and electricity efficiency for cellular products. The X75 is also reportedly equipped to process AI workloads 2.5 instances speedier than its predecessor, the X70.

Area devices present superior functionality for each watt, as opposed to cloud-centered data centers, Katouzian mentioned for the duration of his keynote, noting that shifting forward, it won’t be feasible for AI workloads to be hosted purely in the cloud and the most economical practical experience would come from sharing workloads concerning shopper gadgets and the cloud.

“As expansion in the amount of linked products and data targeted visitors continues to speed up and details centre prices climb, it only will not be probable to deliver every little thing to the cloud,” Katouzian stated.

As the have to have for chips that can support AI abilities continues to skyrocket, Qualcomm is just just one of numerous providers, like Nvidia and Arm, that has pivoted its enterprise model to acquire benefit of the rising desire.

However, even though Katouzian mentioned during the keynote that, to date, Qualcomm has transported two billion AI-able products and solutions, in Qualcomm’s second-quarter earnings for economical 12 months 2023, the enterprise saw profits from handset chips, a core small business for the firm, decrease 17% calendar year on year.

In a statement issued at the time, CEO Cristiano Amon blamed the final results on a tough environment, and reported the company experienced not found proof that smartphone income are recovering in China. According to IDC, smartphone shipments for the international sector declined more than 14% in the initial quarter of 2023.

Inspite of the challenging market place, talking to analysts just after the firm claimed its 2023 2nd quarter success, Amon reported that Qualcomm is “uniquely positioned” to help the abundance of AI use circumstances on edge units.

“We’re advancing AI to make main on-product capabilities ubiquitous this sort of as notion, reasoning, action, and now, material creation,” he claimed. “With thousands and thousands of AI-enabled system shipments for each calendar year, unparalleled AI processing functionality per watt in the broadest range of product categories from smartphones to PCs, automotive, and IoT, Qualcomm is firmly at the forefront of this upcoming transformation.”