Qualcomm Unveils Dragonwing IQ-X Series Industrial Chipsets, Supports AI Workflows for Smart Industries

Qualcomm, on Friday, unveiled its Dragonwing IQ-X series of chipsets, which are designed for industrial use cases. The processors will power programmable logic controllers (PLCs), advanced human-machine interfaces (HMIs), edge controllers, panel PCs and box PCs. These platforms are designed by the company to function during harsh operating conditions with a ruggedised package. Additionally, the chipmaker states that it has added peripheral support to enable easy integration across a wide range of industrial equipment. The key focus areas of the chipset are multimedia capabilities, support for AI workloads, and a power-efficient design, Qualcomm said.

Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ-X Series Chipsets to Power Smart Industries

In a press release, the San Diego-based semiconductor giant detailed the upcoming Dragonwing IQ-X series chipsets. It is powered by a custom-designed Oryon CPU architecture, which is built on a 4nm process technology. It has a configuration of eight to 12 high-performance cores reaching up to 3.4GHz clock speeds. The series supports up to 45 TOPS (tera-operations per second) of AI-performance via its integrated NPU (Neural Processing Unit), aimed at enabling edge-AI workloads such as defect detection and predictive maintenance.

The IQ-X series supports a temperature range from -40 degrees Celsius to 105 degrees Celsius, targeting deployment in hostile environments, such as industrial automation, robotics and energy control systems. Peripheral support includes up to 64GB LPDDR5x memory, UFS 4.0 storage, multiple display and camera interfaces and extensive I/O (including up to 221 GPIOs).

On the software side, the platform integrates with Windows 11 IoT Enterprise long-term servicing channel (LTSC) along with industrial middleware and frameworks such as Qt, CODESYS and EtherCAT. The processors are offered in Computer-on-Module (CoM) form factors to ease integration into existing carrier boards and reduce bill-of-materials for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Key technical details of the series include: support for high-speed storage (UFS 4.0), multiple camera sensors (up to six on the higher-end variant), PCIe Gen4 connectivity, display outputs up to 5120 x 2880p at 60Hz refresh rate, and extensive support for Ethernet, Wi-Fi 7 and 5G cellular networking modules.

The company states the IQ-X series is engineered to enable OEMs and ODMs to build and deploy ruggedised, high-performance edge computing devices more quickly and at lower complexity. Qualcomm says companies such as Advantech, congatec, NEXCOM, Portwell, Inc., SECO and Tria are among the early adopters designing products around the IQ-X series.