Qualcomm is a firehose of product and standards announcements these days. On Oct. 20, I think I received something like a dozen announcements of one sort or another. I’ve written before about how the company manages to maintain its focus, even when under great stress. And now that Qualcomm is out from under a heap of lawsuits, it’s back in full flower as a technological cornucopia.
Of all the possible choices of what to highlight from among various recent developments, I found the joint announcement by the company and a small firm named Jacoti to be the most compelling for the simple reason that it involves the technology of hearing, and, as mine gets progressively worse, the topic has increasingly attracted my attention.
Of European origin, Jacoti is a medical device manufacturer, software developer, and web service provider staffed by audiologists and their fellow travelers. The partnership involves Jacoti’s adapting its medical-grade audio technology to run on Qualcomm silicon, specifically the QCC5100, the firm’s premium-tier, ultra-low-power system-on-a-chip (SoC). The QCC5100 is primarily about handling Bluetooth, the personal-area communications technology often used for peripherals like headsets, game controllers, and speakers, but it has a full stack, including system and application processors, system and developer digital signal processors…
