Samsung’s new ‘Bio-Processor’ is an all-in-one chip for health wearables

Samsung makes a lot of technology on the consumer side, but it also has a semiconductor division that makes chips comparable to Qualcomm. Their new Bio-Processor is meant for health wearables and can compute numerous health data and “bio-signals” without the need for any other chips.

This all-in-one chip integrates such things as processing, memory, and power management while also specializing in analyzing body fat, skeletal muscle mass, heart rate and rhythm, skin temperature, and stress level. While the chip can process all those signals, device makers still need to add sensors that monitor for those things, of course.

The current state of fitness monitoring in wearables is rather limited to steps and heart rate. The latter is wildly inaccurate especially on Android Wear devices. Such an integrated chip solution would hopefully raise the quality on the plethora of health devices that are now cheaply available.

According to Samsung, we should see their Bio-Processor in health devices during the first half of 2016 and that they are currently in mass production. They have several wearable reference platforms available that use the new chip, citing a wristband and a patch-like device.