Qualcomm unveiled Networking Pro A7 Elite, a Wi-Fi gateway which it claims pushes AI to the edge for service providers’ home and enterprise broadband networks.
Ganesh Swaminathan, VP and GM of wireless infrastructure and networking for Qualcomm Technologies, stated the Networking Pro A7 Elite blends Wi-Fi 7, 10G fibre, 5G Ethernet, RF front-end modules and filters into a single platform.
The gateway features an AI co-processor with 40 trillion operations per second to improve Wi-Fi 7 connectivity and networking performance.
It also provides connected devices with centralised generative AI processing capabilities.
Swaminathan explained Qualcomm looks at AI in two ways. The first is “all about your experience in terms of what wireless connectivity brings to you”.
“We call that the network AI element of the platform.”
“Then there’s the super-exciting generative AI portion of the story to bring the platform capabilities to drive value-added use cases for our customers.”
The platform fosters AI-enhanced application development through the Qualcomm AI Hub, where Swaminathan said developers have access to more than 100 optimised models to create their own applications.
On the consumer side, the Networking Pro A7 Elite can be used for personalised services including security in smart homes.
Providing more AI in the gateway and edge eliminates any need to send information to the cloud. Swaminathan stated it provides lower latency and faster response times for use cases including enterprise security systems.
“The idea here is to open up this platform and be a much more programmable, software-defined platform” across devices including smartphones.
Qualcomm has released sample quantities of the Networking Pro A7 Series.
