Qualcomm has announced a partnership with Microsoft that will see the company release the first cellular chip optimised and certified for Microsoft’s Azure Sphere Internet of Things (IoT) operating system.
The new Azure Sphere-certified chipset for IoT will include hardware-level security, come preconfigured with the Azure Sphere, and will automatically connect to Azure Sphere security cloud services.
“We are pleased to expand our broad portfolio of solutions for the Internet of Things and to add the powerful capabilities of Microsoft Azure Sphere to our upcoming chipset,” said Jeffery Torrance, vice president, business development, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
“We hope to enable exciting new business transformations for customers in a variety of verticals, where powerful edge computing, low latency connectivity, and end-to-end security can make an important difference.”
Azure Sphere is Microsoft’s end-to-end solution that includes an Azure Sphere-certified chip, the Azure Sphere operatand the Azure Sphere Security Service. The solution adds to Qualcomm Technologies’ existing hardware-based security to make it easy for manufacturers to create secure solutions, and to keep devices up to date over time with over a decade of security and OS updates created and delivered directly to each device by Microsoft.
“For IoT innovations to be reliable, they must be built on a foundation of security. Qualcomm Technologies will allow partners to innovate with the assurance that their products, customers, and brands are secured,” added Galen Hunt, distinguished engineer and managing director, Microsoft Azure Sphere.
“The new IoT chipset will light up a broad set of new scenarios at the outer edge—even the most resource-constrained ones. Together with the silicon innovation and cellular and embedded security expertise Qualcomm Technologies brings, our partners will have the freedom to securely connect devices anytime, anywhere.”
This builds on Qualcomm Technologies’ ongoing work with Microsoft, which previously brought AI to the Intelligent Edge with the Vision AI Developer Kit for Azure IoT solutions featuring the Qualcomm Vision Intelligence 300 Platform, which delivers powerful edge computing for on-device AI and machine learning, with exceptional thermal efficiency, across a wide range of IoT applications.
Azure IoT SDK support for Qualcomm Technologies’ latest IoT chipset, the Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem was also recently released. The Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem is a purpose-built LPWA chipset for the IoT, offering global multimode LTE category M1 (eMTC) and NB2 (NB-IoT) connectivity, as well as 2G/E-GPRS connectivity, application processing, geolocation, hardware-based security, support for cloud services and accompanying developer tools, and comes with a fully integrated RF front-end. It also features a comprehensive hardware security framework, including Qualcomm Trusted Execution Environment, and counts more than 27 licensees to date.
