Will The Meta-Qualcomm Partnership With Llama 2 Take The Smartphone World By Storm?

Hold onto your seats, it's the ultimate team-up is here!

Qualcomm and Meta are joining forces and guess what they're bringing to the party: a brand new, llama-tastic Large Language Model (LLM) called Llama 2!

Qualcomm and Meta announced that beginning in 2024, phones and computers powered by Qualcomm chips would be able to use the social networking company's latest large language model Llama 2.

Nvidia stock is up more than 220% this year as a result of LLMs' predominant use in huge server farms running on Nvidia graphics processors to handle the technology's massive data and computing requirements.

Yet, it is companies like Qualcomm that create cutting-edge chips for smartphones and personal computers, which have largely been left out of the AI boom. Qualcomm's stock price is up by 10% so far in 2023, which is even lower than the 36% increase seen by the NASDAQ. #GrowthProspect

To bolster its reputation and business growth, Qualcomm hinted at their intention to market its processors as suitable for artificial intelligence (AI) but only "on the edge" that is, on a device, rather than in the cloud. There is a huge cost associated with running AI models but if they can run on smartphones instead of in large data centres and servers, it might lead to better and faster voice assistants and other AI applications.

“The ability to run generative AI models like Llama 2 on devices such as smartphones, PCs, VR/AR headsets, and vehicles allows developers to save on cloud costs and provide users with more private, more reliable and personal experiences,” Qualcomm said in a statement.
 
Qualcomm and Meta's tag team is a llama-nificent beginning, so let's dive deeper into the news!

CNBC spilled the tea on this llama-tastic story.
 

So, why did they decide to work together now?

The "weights," or sets of numbers that help determine how a given AI model functions, were made public by Meta, making Llama particularly noteworthy. By doing so, academic institutions and, eventually, businesses will be able to run the AI models on their own computers without needing to obtain permission or pay for the privilege. The weights of other famous LLMs, such as OpenAI's GPT-4 or Google's Bard, are kept private and are not available to the public. This led to the eventual collaboration.

Qualcomm and Meta have collaborated extensively in the past, most notably on the Quest virtual reality devices' CPUs. It has also shown off several artificial intelligence models, such as the open-source image generator Stable Diffusion, running slowly on its devices.
 

What can we expect from the team-up?

Qualcomm has decided to make the open-source Llama 2 models developed by Meta available on Qualcomm devices in the hopes that they will pave the way for the creation of useful tools like smart virtual assistants. Meta's Llama 2 is comparable to ChatGPT in functionality but it can also be compressed into a more manageable app that can be run on a mobile device.

Qualcomm's chips feature a "tensor processor unit," or TPU, which excels at the kinds of calculations necessary for artificial intelligence models. However, a mobile device's processing capacity is far less than that of a data centre equipped with state-of-the-art GPUs.
 
So, can the dynamic duo of Qualcomm and Meta take 'Llama 2' from a language learning model to a legendary AI partnership? Or will it leave users scratching their heads while ChatGPT and others ride ahead? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!