Glass Imaging Debuts GlassAI Technology at Snapdragon Summit 2024
Snapdragon 8 Elite Enables Sophisticated Neural Networks To Produce Incredible Image Quality on Mobile Devices
Oct 21, 2024 - Hawaii - Glass Imaging, the company harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to revolutionize image quality on digital cameras, today demonstrated the power of their GlassAI technology at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.’s annual Snapdragon Summit. The demo showcased GlassAI technology running on a reference device containing the Snapdragon® 8 Elite Mobile Platform, showing incredible improvements in image quality and clarity. Such real time deployment of the GlassAI neural ISP technology is made possible by Qualcomm Technologies’ advanced neural accelerator featured on this platform, the Qualcomm® Hexagon™ NPU .
“Today’s demonstration showcased our ability to leverage the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform to capture a burst of RAW images from an Android camera and process it using a custom trained neural network specific to that camera, and to extract the maximum possible detail,” said Tom Bishop, Ph.D., Founder and CTO, Glass Imaging “The end result was incredibly detailed image quality that wasn’t available before – with no hallucinatory effects often associated with generative neural networks and on-device upsampling.”
During the demo at Snapdragon Summit, a side-by-side comparison showed the advantage of the GlassAI pipeline on a smartphone reference device from Qualcomm Technologies versus an iPhone 16 Pro Max. The latest generation Hexagon NPU enables the GlassAI Neural ISP to take over from the standard ISP and deliver massive improvements in quality over the previous generation, as well as competing devices.
“Snapdragon 8 Elite opens new possibilities for AI on mobile devices,” said Ziv Attar, Founder and CEO, Glass Imaging. “With this new generation, we can run much larger and more sophisticated neural networks instantly allowing GlassAI to create a new paradigm for what smartphone cameras can accomplish in terms of clarity, resolution and definition.”
The GlassAI processing on devices that contain the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform will work in harmony with the latest Qualcomm Spectra™ ISP and its enhanced Hexagon RAW image Direct Link capabilities, and directly outputs a finished RGB image including all noise reduction, sharpening and finishing operations. The GlassAI Neural ISP corrects for lens aberrations and sensor effects like crosstalk, as well as delivering a clean and detailed image across light conditions. GlassAI also works directly with the Quad-CFA data from the sensor, without relying on a prior re-mosaicing step. The result is the maximum possible detail for zooming in, compared with standard ISP pipelines.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform debuts industry leading technologies such as the custom-built Qualcomm Oryon™ CPU, Qualcomm® Adreno™ GPU with its pioneering sliced architecture, and enhanced Hexagon NPU, all of which deliver remarkable performance improvements. These innovations empower the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform to transform user interactions with their devices – making on-device multi-modal AI a reality on smartphones for the first time yet, and fueling many other experiences across gaming, web browsing, camera capabilities, multitasking and more.
For more information, visit the Snapdragon 8 Elite webpage and product brief. To see reactions from key industry players visit Snapdragon Summit Partner Quotes. Additional information, livestream replays and event content are also available on the Snapdragon Summit Event Hub.
Glass Imaging has previously announced a $9.3M extended Seed funding round led by GV (Google Ventures) and joined by Future Ventures, Abstract Ventures and LDV Capital. This latest funding round follows an initial Seed investment in 2021 led by LDV Capital along with GroundUP Ventures. For more information on Glass Imaging and GlassAI visit https://www.glass-imaging.com/
About Glass Imaging
Glass Imaging was founded by Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, Ph.D, former Apple engineers who led the team and created the technology behind the iPhone’s Portrait Mode. Their mission with Glass is to revolutionize the quality of compact camera systems on smartphones, and close the gap with professional DSLR and mirrorless cameras. The broader Glass team has expertise across Optical Engineering, Computational Imaging, Deep Learning and efficient Computer Vision algorithms. Glass is currently developing licensable IP, including GlassAI, across novel camera architectures and software based solutions. Exploiting the power of Edge AI chips present in today’s devices, the company’s GlassAI software can be tailored for any current or new camera to deliver photo quality far exceeding those shipped by OEMs. Glass is also using this technology to enable a new class of optical hardware designs that overcome limitations of traditional camera architectures.
Qualcomm, Snapdragon, Adreno, Hexagon, Qualcomm Oryon and Qualcomm Spectra are trademarks or registered trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated. Snapdragon and Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
