Accelerating industrial IoT development with the Dragonwing IQ8 and Dragonwing IQ9 series

Dragonwing IQ-8275 for compute-heavy machine vision and AI processing

We offer the Dragonwing IQ-8275 in two configurations: a 20-TOPS variant that requires two power-management ICs (PMICs), and a 40-TOPS variant that requires four PMICs.

The Dragonwing IQ-8275 is ideal for factory automation, industrial robots, machine vision and AI applications requiring significant compute power. Designed for heterogeneous computing, it has independent cores for CPU, graphics processing unit (GPU), neural processing unit (NPU), DSP and a real-time MCU-like subsystem.

The SoC is especially valuable in industrial IoT applications including the following:

- Factory automation

- Industrial gateways

- Edge AI boxes

- Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs)

- Industrial robots

- Drones

- Machine vision

- Industrial personal computers

Dragonwing IQ-9075 for top performance in demanding industrial applications

Choose the Dragonwing IQ-9075 when you need the highest performance available for your AI-based devices. While maintaining power efficiency, the SoC gives you high performance in extreme environments. It is available in two configurations—a 50-TOPS variant requiring two PMICs, and a 100-TOPS variant requiring four PMICs—allowing you to scale performance to your needs.

The Dragonwing IQ‑9075 is designed to maximum specifications for IoT devices, ensuring that your applications will have the memory, CPU/GPU/NPU cycles, display ports, video codecs, megapixels, physical interfaces and storage they need.

It’s ideal for industrial IoT applications in temperature extremes, such as the following:

- Edge AI boxes

- Industrial robots

- Drones

- Machine vision

- Industrial personal computers

- Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs)

Besides its high specifications for performance, the SoC stands out for the variety of peripheral devices you can connect to it. For example, we provide a continuously expanding list of approved cameras and memory that can be used with the chip.

To simplify your design work and shorten your time to market, take advantage of the Dragonwing IQ‑9075 Module. It provides a pre‑integrated, industrial‑grade solution with the performance and flexibility of the Dragonwing IQ9 Series.

Developer-friendly software stack

The Dragonwing IQ-8275 and Dragonwing IQ-9075 run both Ubuntu and Qualcomm Linux software stack for developer-friendly multi-OS support.

The stack is a comprehensive package of software, tools, and documentation designed for Dragonwing SoCs. With its unified Linux distribution, you can build once, scale, and deploy across all supported IoT SoCs, including Dragonwing IQ-8275 and Dragonwing IQ-9075. The distribution is built on Yocto Project Long-Term Support (LTS) and incorporates standard boot infrastructure, the latest LTS kernel, and drivers aligned with upstream Linux development.

This upstream-first, publicly developed software stack supports all processors, subsystems, and components within the platform, including the CPU, GPU, NPU, video processing unit (VPU), display processing unit (DPU), and PMICs. Qualcomm Linux is designed for production-grade deployment. It supports virtualization, over-the-air (OTA) updates, and long-term lifecycles in Dragonwing IoT SoCs.

Prototype and test on hardware evaluation kits

To be sure of what you’re moving into production, you will need a robust test bench. The Dragonwing IQ-8275 Evaluation Kit (EVK) and the Dragonwing IQ-9075 Evaluation Kit let you build and test against all the capabilities of the Dragonwing IQ8 and Dragonwing IQ9 SoCs respectively.

You can test independent AI, graphics processing, and multi-thread and heterogeneous computing for industrial IoT. For computer vision and multi-sensor fusion applications, the kits are made to connect to a range of peripherals through low- and high-speed connectors including USB, PCIe, DSI, SDIO, OSPI and I2S. MIPI CSI inputs let you manage as many as 16 concurrent video streams at 1080p.

Besides wired 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, you can connect over onboard Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth® 5.3 wireless technology and extend the kit with a mezzanine board. The EVKs are designed to withstand the real-world conditions you throw at them, with a heat sink and fan. Test your fleet management applications on the controlled power consumption and heat dissipation of the EVKs.

You’ll find the kits are ideally suited to your work with Dragonwing IQ8 and Dragonwing IQ9 Series processors, including the following use cases and applications:

- Edge AI processing: Small, visual and large language models (SLMs, VLMs, LLMs)

- Sensor fusion and video processing: Aggregating an existing sensing network (cameras/sensors) to add edge AI inference

- Edge gateways: Data aggregation through loT connectivity

- Industrial robots: Drones, AMRs, cobots, palletizers

- Proofs of concept for AI-enabled robotics: Compact robots, robotic arms

- Smart sensors and industrial controllers: Adding exceptional capabilities in navigation and perception

- Industrial vision: Inspection, quality control, safety monitoring

FAQs

What is the difference between Dragonwing IQ8 (IQ-8275) and Dragonwing IQ9 (IQ-9075)?

The main differences are in the level of performance and in the number of connectors.

For example, Dragonwing IQ8 delivers up to 40 TOPS of AI inference, handles up to 12 cameras at 8 megapixels, and accommodates up to 5 displays. Dragonwing IQ9 delivers up to 100 TOPS of AI inference, handles up to 16 cameras at 12 megapixels, and accommodates up to 12 displays.

Who should use the Dragonwing IQ8 and Dragonwing IQ9 Evaluation Kits?

These kits are ideal for OEM/ODM engineers and independent developers who need to rapidly prototype industrial AI and IoT applications. They act as a highly capable single-board computer (similar to a Raspberry Pi) but offer enterprise-grade expansion capabilities, including USB, PCIe, DSI, SDIO, OSPI, I2S, and MIPI CSI.

If you need a fully featured, compact board to test your software before building custom hardware, these kits are the perfect fit.

What kinds of applications can I build with the Dragonwing IQ8 and Dragonwing IQ9 Evaluation Kits?

These kits are designed for building high-performance edge AI, smart vision, and industrial IoT solutions. To help you get to market faster, they include ready-to-adapt sample applications for common use cases.

You can use these templates to quickly build multi-camera streaming setups (like dash cams), multi-channel video decoding (for video walls), and complex machine learning tasks (like object detection and parallel AI inference).

Next steps

Ready to get started? Learn more about the industrial IoT applications you can build on the Dragonwing IQ-8275 and Dragonwing IQ-9075 SoCs.

We’re always glad to hear how you use these SoCs and EVKs in your own industrial IoT development. Visit the Qualcomm Developers Discord channel to tell us how you’re doing, tell us what you need, and connect with developers who are learning along with you.