Qualcomm introduces IQ9, IQ8, and IQ6 industrial IoT SoC families with up to 100 TOPS of AI performance

Qualcomm Technologies has introduced the new industrial-grade IQ chipset family with the IQ9, IQ8, and IQ6 series offering on-device AI performance of up to 100 TOPS, industrial temperature range, and built-in safety features such as SIL-3 (safety and integrity level).

Qualcomm IQ series of chipsets target a range of premium (IQ9), mid-tier (IQ8), and entry-level (IQ6) applications such as industrial and agricultural robots, drones, industrial inspection and automation, edge AI boxes with computer vision capabilities, edge gateway analytics solutions, and more.

Qualcomm IQ9 Series – IQ-9100, IQ-9075

Key features and specifications:

CPU
- IQ-9075 – Octa-core Kryo Gen 6 scaling from 1.632 to 2.55 GHz
- IQ-9100 – Octa-core Kryo Gold Prime @ 2.36 GHz (CNXSoft: The specs are not clear for the CPU part…, both SKUs could be the same for the CPU part)
GPU – Adreno 663 GPU
Audio DSP (LPASS)
- 1980 MPPS, 7x TDM/I2S
- 3x High-Speed I2S for Radio FE
AI Performance
- IQ9075 – 50 to 100 INT8 TOPS (Dense)
- IQ9100 – 100 INT8 TOPS (Dense)
Memory – LPDDR5 @ 3200 MHz up to 36 GB with inline ECC
Storage – 2x UFS 3.1 G4 2-lanes, 1x 8-bit SDCC5, NVMe over PCIe
Display interfaces
- 2x DSI
- 2x DP MST2
- 2x DP MST4
- Up to 12 displays (somehow) with a typical configuration being 5x 4K displays
Video Decode/Encode – 4K @ 275 FPS decode / 4K @ 170 FPS encode
Camera
- 24-bit HDR safe ISP
- Max 12 MP sensor resolution
- Up to 16x cameras over 4x 4-lane CSI2
- 2.4 GPix/s throughput
Networking – 2x 2.5 GbE w/ TSN (SGMII)
Peripherals
- 2x PCIe Ports – 1x 2-lane + 1x 4-lane (Gen4)
- QSPI
- USB – 2x USB 3.1, 1x USB 2.0
MCU-Like Subsystem
- IQ-9075 – 4x real-time cores @ 1.85 GHz with 8x CAN FD + 1x GbE (1x RGMII)
- IQ-9100 – Up to SIL3-compliant, dedicated safety island with 4x real-time cores @ 1.85 GHz with 8x CAN FD + 1x GbE (1x RGMII)
Temperature Range – -40°C to 115°C (Tj)
Package – FCBGA1723+HS, 25.0 mm x 25.0 mm, 0.6 mm ball pitch

Operating systems are listed as “Linux Yocto, Ubuntu” for IQ-9075, and “Linux” for IQ-9100… It almost looks like the documentation part was outsourced to Banana Pi… (That’s a joke, people!).

The Qualcomm IQ9 Series 100 TOPS AI accelerator can generate 22 tokens per second when running the Llama2 7-billion-parameter models.

Qualcomm IQ8 Series – IQ-8300, IQ-8275

Specifications highlights:

CPU – Octa-core Kryo processor with 2x Kryo Gold Prime @ 2.35 GHz + 2x Kryo Gold @ 2.1 GHz + 4x Kryo Silver @ 1.95 GHz
GPU – Adreno 623 GPU
Audio
- DSP: V66 @ 1.3 GHz + 1x V73 @ 1.7 GHz
- Up to 8x I2C/PCM/TDM
AI Performance
- IQ8275 – 20 to 40 INT8 TOPS (Dense)
- IQ8300 – 40 INT8 TOPS (Dense)
Memory – LPDDR5 @ 3200 MHz up to 32 GB with inline ECC
Storage – 2x UFS 3.1 G4 2-lanes, 1x 8-bit SDCC5, 1x eMMC 5.1
Display interfaces
- 1x 4-lane MIPI DSI
- 1x DP 1.4 MST4
- Up to 5 displays with a typical configuration being 1x 4K + 2x 1920×1080
Video Decode/Encode – 4K @ 135 FPS decode / 4K @ 85 FPS encode
Camera
- 24-bit HDR safe ISP with RGB-IR CFA
- Max 8 MP sensor resolution
- Up to 12x cameras over 3x 4-lane CSI2
- 2.4 GPix/s throughput
Networking – 1x 2.5 GbE w/ TSN (SGMII)
Peripherals
- 2x PCIe Ports – 1x 2-lane + 1x 4-lane (Gen4)
- QSPI
- I2C/SPI/UART
- USB – 1x USB 3.1, 1x USB 2.0
MCU-Like Subsystem
- IQ-8275 – 4x real-time cores @ 1.85 GHz with 4x CAN FD + 1x GbE (1x RGMII)
- IQ-8300 – Up to SIL3-compliant, dedicated safety island with 4x real-time cores @ 1.85 GHz with 4x CAN FD + 1x GbE (1x RGMII)
Temperature Range – -40°C to 125°C (Tj)
Package – FCBGA1326+HS, 25.0 mm x 25.0 mm, 0.65 mm ball pitch

Qualcomm IQ6 Series – IQ-615

Qualcomm IQ-615 specifications:

CPU – Octa-core processor with 2x Kryo4 Gold @ 1.9 GHz + 6x Kyro4 Silver-lite @ 1.6 GHz
GPU – Adreno 612 GPU with support for OpenGL ES3.2, OpenCL 2.0, DX12FL9.3, Vulkan 1.x
VPU
- Video Decode – 4K 60fps 10-bit: HEVC/H.265, 8-bit VP9, VP8, and H.264
- Video Encode – 1080p 60fps, 8-bit: HEVC/H.265, H.264, and VP8
- Video Decode + Encode – 4K 30fps decode + 1080p 30fps encode
Compute DSP (cDSP) – Hexagon QDSP6 v66A @ 1.1 GHz, 2x HVX (vector extensions)
Audio DSP (aDSP) – Hexagon QDSP6 v66K @ 1.0 GHz
Memory – 16-bit LPDDR4x 1555 MHz, up to 8 GB
Storage
- 4-bit SD/SDIO 3.0 (UHS-I)
- 8-bit eMMC 5.1,
- 1-lane UFS2.1 Gear3 (1-lane UFS3.1 can be supported with UFS2.1 feature set)
- QSPI for boot
Display Interfaces
- 4-lane MIPI DSI-2
- DP v1.4 (supports: SST and MST)
- Up to three displays with 2x 1920×1080 @ 60fps (FHD) + 1x 1280×720 @ 60fps
Camera Interfaces – Up to 6x cameras over 3x 4-lane MIPI CSI-2 v1.3 (D-PHY 1.2, C-PHY 1.0)
Audio
- Up to 5x I2S/PCM/TDM
- 2x SLIMbus
- 2x high-speed I2S (Typically for audio, but Qualcomm says it’s for software-defined radio…)
Networking
- 1x RGMII / RMII with MDIO Gigabit Ethernet and AVB support (1.8V only)
- Optional Wi-Fi 6E 802.11ax 2×2 Dual MAC DBS + Bluetooth 5.3; Tri-band support: 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz
USB – 1x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (SS), 1x USB 2.0 (HS) OTG
Other peripheral interfaces
- 1-lane PCIe Gen 2 RC / EP
- Up to 14x 4-wire QUP v3 (UART, I2C, SPI)
- 100+ GPIOs
Power Management – PMM6155AU PMIC (0.8 mm pitch)
Package – FCBGA761+HS: 23 x 23 x 2.45 mm (incl metallic heat spreader); 0.8 mm pitch, non-PoP
Temperature Range – -40°C to +105°C
Process – 11 nm FINFET low power

Qualcomm also provides support for Yocto Linux and Ubuntu for the IQ-615 SoC. While the IQ8 is clearly a cost-down version of the IQ9, the IQ6 looks to be a different design optimized for cost.

It is suitable for industrial gateways, industrial HMIs, industrial handhelds (IHH) devices, and industrial machine vision, while the more powerful IQ8/IQ9 will be found in industrial robots, Edge AI boxes, drones, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and other application that benefit from the extra performance and additional interfaces.

Software, ecosystem, and support

The Qualcomm IQ series processors are supported by Qualcomm Linux designed for IoT development with an LTS Kernel and the Qualcomm IoT Solutions Framework with operating systems, software enablers, reference designs, and partner networks.

While light on specifics, the product page shows it’s more than just a software solution, and Qualcomm helps customers select silicon, software, AI solutions, and more until the product is ready. Some examples include industrial worker assistance for repair and/or location-based assistance, worker/site safety, and drone as a first responder.

Qualcomm announced the IQ9, IQ8, and IQ6 series on the last day of Embedded World North America 2024, and it’s unclear when the IoT processor will come to market since there’s no mention of “sampling to customer” and mass production dates. Further details may be found on the product page.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.