Qualcomm has announced a new low-power Bluetooth SoC with the QCC5100 series, a single-chip solution targeting wireless earbuds and other audio devices with the promise of longer battery life and better audio quality than existing solutions. The QCC5100 integrates ANC (active noise cancellation), aptX HD audio, and 3rd-party voice assistant support, among other features.

Qualcomm Biometric Headset Example Design

Features for the QCC5100 from Qualcomm:

Low power design and ultra-small form factor

Dual-core 32-bit processor application subsystem

Dual-core Qualcomm® Kalimba™ DSP Audio subsystem

Support for aptX and aptX HD, Qualcomm TrueWireless Stereo, and Enhanced ANC (Feed- Forward, Feed-Backward, Hybrid)

Voice Assistant Services, low power wake word detection

Bluetooth 5.0 and 2 Mbps Bluetooth® Low Energy support

Embedded ROM + RAM and support for external Flash memory

2-ch 98dBA headset class D (integrated amplifier)

2-ch 99dBA line inputs (single ended)

192kHz 24-bit I2S & SPDIF interfaces

Flexible software platform with powerful new IDE support

Qualcomm Occluded Earbuds Example Design

Qualcomm says this new chip – a ground-up design with a quad-core processor architecture (2x APs and 2x DSPs) – offers power savings of up to 65% and provides up to 3x playback time of current Bluetooth devices on the market.

Qualcomm has shown device designs using the new SoC including occluded earbuds (no wire connecting the two) and a biometric headset, and while there are no announcements on shipping products Qualcomm expects to have examples for manufacturers in the first half of 2018.

Full press release after the break.