Apple patent involves ‘distributed processing’ to power ‘Apple Glasses’

Apple has been granted a patent (number 20220292756) for “distributed processing in computer generated reality system.” It involves recording video on the rumored “Apple Glasses,” an augmented reality/mixed reality headset.

About the patent

As Apple notes in the patent, augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), virtual reality (VR), and cross reality (XR) may allow users to interact with an immersive environment having artificial elements such that the user may feel a part of that environment. Similarly, MR systems may combine computer generated virtual content with real-world images or a real-world view to augment a user’s view of the world, or alternatively combines virtual representations of real-world objects with views of a three-dimensional virtual world. 

The simulated environments of virtual reality and/or the mixed environments of mixed reality may thus provide an interactive user experience for multiple applications. However, all this requires a lot of computer power. Apple’s idea is to share the necessary computing power among different devices. For example, Apple Glasses could offload some of the processing power to an iPhone and handle the rest on the device itself.

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “Techniques are disclosed relating to display devices. In some embodiments, a display device includes a display system configured to display three-dimensional content to a user. The display device is configured to discover, via a network interface, one or more compute nodes operable to facilitate rendering the three-dimensional content and receive information identifying abilities of the one or more compute nodes to facilitate the rendering. 

“Based on the received information, the display device evaluates a set of tasks to identify one or more of the tasks to offload to the one or more compute nodes for facilitating the rendering and distributes, via the network interface, the identified one or more tasks to the one or more compute nodes for processing by the one or more compute nodes.”

About Apple Glasses

When it comes to Apple Glasses, the rumors are abundant. Such a device will arrive in mid-to-late 2023. Or maybe 2024. It will be a head-mounted display. Or may have a design like “normal” glasses. Or it may be eventually be available in both. The Apple Glasses may or may not have to be tethered to an iPhone to work. Other rumors say that Apple Glasses could have a custom-build Apple chip and a dedicated operating system dubbed “rOS” for “reality operating system.”