Qualcomm and Google announced that they had agreed to expand their partnership to development of a Snapdragon Wear platform based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) designed for next-generation Wear OS products. The announcement is a milestone as it envisions custom RISC-V-based solutions from Qualcomm that will address the whole Google Wear OS ecosystem.

The announcement by the two high-tech giants means that Qualcomm will work on RISC-V-based hardware for wearable devices, whereas Google will work on software for these applications. In general, this means that the two companies are collaboratively developing a RISC-V platform for wearable devices — for smartwatches initially, but perhaps for something more advanced going forward.

"Qualcomm Technologies have been a pillar of the Wear OS ecosystem, providing high performance, low power systems for many of our OEM partners," said Bjorn Kilburn, General manager of Wear OS at Google. "We are excited to extend our work with Qualcomm Technologies and bring a RISC-V wearable solution to market."

While system-in-packages for wearable devices may be considered simplistic, that is not at always the case. In addition to the main processor that enables computing capabilities for the whole device, they feature multiple supporting capabilities like storage and sensors. All of these are typically based on cores featuring ISA developed by Arm, including Cortex A-series cores for compute as well as Cortex M-series cores for microcontrollers. All of these cores cost money and replacing them with RISC-V ones will reduce or even eliminate licensing fees to Arm.

The announcement lacks many details. For example, we do not know whether Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear platform featuring RISC-V ISA will replace all Arm cores or only select ones. Yet, Google's involvement in the project clearly emphasizes its scope and importance.

"We are excited to leverage RISC-V and expand our Snapdragon Wear platform as a leading silicon provider for Wear OS," said Dino Bekis, vice president and general manager, Wearables and Mixed Signal Solutions, Qualcomm. "Our Snapdragon Wear platform innovations will help the Wear OS ecosystem rapidly evolve and streamline new device launches."