Qualcomm Supports Amazon Web Services Greengrass to Facilitate Development of IoT Solutions

Qualcomm Technologies Inc. announced support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) Greengrass in select system-on-chips (SoCs) designed to help manufacturers accelerate development of IoT products with edge processing capabilities using the new AWS Software Solution. Manufacturers expected to commercialize solutions running AWS Greengrass on Qualcomm Technologies’ chips include Advantech and Thundersoft, with commercial products expected to be available later this year.

The edge processing capabilities enabled by Qualcomm Technologies’ SoCs are particularly well-suited for commercial and industrial gateways. Using multi-protocol communications, these gateways can aggregate data and support a wide variety of field sensors and devices – including legacy equipment that lacks IP connectivity or is required for regulatory reasons. Local data processing and control signaling in gateways helps reduce overall system latency, while local data storage allows for enhanced security and privacy using the security features available in Qualcomm Technologies’ chips.

Improved connectivity capabilities at the edge can also result in meaningful reductions in total cost of ownership for IoT applications. Cellular connectivity in gateways using Qualcomm Technologies’ LTE modems helps improve deployment flexibility, portability, ubiquitous coverage and reduce data transfer costs by connecting many nodes to a single cellular hub.

“Support for AWS Greengrass in Qualcomm Technologies’ platforms will help enhance the performance and cost effectiveness of many IoT applications by bringing the power of AWS to the edge,” said Jeffery Torrance, vice president, business development, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.  “We are pleased to work with AWS and our manufacturer customers to support a new category of smart connected edge devices for critical IoT use cases such as industrial, commercial and medical.”

Support for AWS Greengrass in Qualcomm Technologies’ SoC is designed to enable local AWS Lambda execution on gateways and devices.  Qualcomm Technologies plans to port and pre-test AWS Greengrass across several platforms within its portfolio, starting with the APQ8016E (Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 410E) application SoC. This SoC is designed to deliver exceptional edge-processing capabilities by combining the compute power of diverse integrated engines, such as CPU, GPU and DSP, to support high-performance applications including those requiring on-device machine learning or computer vision, and is supported on the DragonBoard™ 410c community development board for rapid prototyping. The APQ8016E (Snapdragon 410E) is available for purchase through third party distributors for a minimum of 10 years from the initial commercial release (to 2025).

“Advantech’s new RSB-4760 single board computer, and EPC-R4760 IoT gateway, both running on Qualcomm Technologies’ platforms, provide a unique combination of power and performance for IoT applications,” said Aaron Su, Assistant Vice President, Embedded IoT Group, Advantech. “Today, we are excited to announce that these two platforms support AWS Greengrass, which brings tremendous flexibility to users by allowing them to create AWS Lambda functions that can be first tested and validated in the AWS Cloud, and then easily deployed to devices. Advantech is delighted to collaborate with AWS and Qualcomm Technologies to simplify users’ experience and bring more innovative IoT applications to the embedded ecosystem.”

“As an important and strategic collaborator, Qualcomm Technologies has been providing us with some of the most advanced technologies in our smart industry,” said Pengcheng Zou, CTO of Thundersoft, “Thundersoft has introduced an Edge Computing Solution, which includes our ThunderConnect gateway developer platform based on Qualcomm Technologies’ APQ8016E SoC and support for AWS Greengrass. The high-performance APQ8016E application SoC enables our Edge Computing Solution in powerful way, thanks to the cutting-edge technologies integrated in the chip. We believe that the work between Qualcomm Technologies and Thundersoft will facilitate quick time-to-production for OEMs and third party developers.”

Qualcomm Technologies will showcase various platforms including sensor monitoring and edge processing at the AWS Greengrass launch event in San Francisco on June 7, 2017.

For more information, visit www.qualcomm.com