Qualcomm acquires Modular and plans to open-source its hardware-flexible AI stack

Qualcomm said it acquired Modular, whose stack it described as similar to CUDA but designed to run on CPUs and accelerators from NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm and other hardware. Qualcomm identified Chris Lattner as Modular’s founder, with the qualification “I think,” and said he created Apple’s Swift programming language and LLVM.

Qualcomm said it is making the stack open source and believes an open platform that scales from data centers across different hardware to the edge could benefit the industry and drive AI innovation. It said it would support the stack even among competitors, arguing that otherwise one company could do most of the innovation.