The RISC-V Snapdragon Wear platform is here to power WearOS devices

In a recent blog post, Qualcomm announced its partnership with Google to develop the RISC-V Snapdragon Wear platform. Both parties in this development process have been working together for years, and this new solution is yet another accomplishment. This solution will be put to use in coming Wear OS smartwatches, helping improve performance and reduce power consumption.

You might be wondering what RISC-V is and why it’s important for use on Wear OS smartwatches. Well, RISC-V (risk-five) is an open-source instruction set architecture just like ARM. The RISC-V solution is here to take over from ARM for usage in the development of custom chips for wearable devices, in this case.

The partnership between Qualcomm and Google is bringing support for RISC-V-based wearable solutions to Wear OS by Google.

This support will lead to the development of newer Snapdragon Wear platforms that use RISC-V. Qualcomm is already working on developing RISC-V hardware that’ll be in use on Wear OS devices. There is a lot that this new solution brings to the wearable industry in terms of performance and competition.

Qualcomm’s RISC-V Snapdragon Wear platform is opening a new window of opportunity for Wear OS devices

Bringing RISC-V solutions to a Wear OS device offers a ton of benefits across the board. Both the manufacturers of smartwatches that’ll use this solution and users of these smartwatches stand to benefit. This solution will open new windows of opportunity for Wear OS devices to use their custom CPUs.

These CPUs will not only offer low power and high performance, but will meet the device’s needs. At the moment, Qualcomm and Google are working to provide software support for RISC-V on Wear OS devices. Devices that will launch with this solution are still in their early development stages and will launch in the future.

Dino Bekis an exec at Qualcomm, says that this solution will “help the Wear OS ecosystem rapidly evolve and streamline new device launches globally.” It’ll do this by allowing Wear OS device OEMs to develop their custom cores. This will help these OEMs to better suit their market, hence providing what their users require in a smartwatch.

By doing this, the competition will thrive, with each OEM bringing innovative thinking into the ecosystem. There is a lot that this new RISC-V Snapdragon Wear platform is going to bring to the wearable industry. These improvements will only be available to smartwatches that run on Google’s Wear OS.

For now, Qualcomm and Google are still working to ensure that the RISC-V solution works perfectly. Once the work is complete and Wear OS devices now support the RISC-V Snapdragon Wear platform, commercialization can begin. There is no information on the timing of these events and when the first RISC-V-based smartwatch will launch.