In a bid to empower new developers, chip major Qualcomm has declared an 'Innovators Development Kit' that will first be available to select universities and research institutions for on-device machine learning applications.

The firm said that it will enable developers to work across various Qualcomm Technologies software solutions to minimise time-to-market and increase customisation.

"Providing new developer communities with access to our technologies will further enable innovation that accelerates the digital economy and drives the greater good," said Ziad Asghar, vice president of product management, Qualcomm Technologies, at the company's flagship 'Snapdragon Summit 2022' here.

It delivers a hardware development kit based on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform, software tools, and support for a new community of developers.

This Qualcomm Innovators Development Kit will later expand to additional developer segments, such as security, multimedia, embedded systems computing, and more.

"Improving time-to-market for developers by minimizing the time from intent to prototype will allow these communities to leverage our aOne Technology Roadmap' for their product needs," said Qualcomm.

Several leading research institutions in the US, including Duke, MIT, and the University of California San Diego, are sampling the Qualcomm Innovators Development Kit in the coming months.

Through the availability of tools and resources, including the Qualcomm AI Stack, the developer kit allows developers to conduct on-device AI research in order to create cutting-edge AI applications, allowing for even more flexibility with end solutions, said the company.