Beyond the Buzzwords: The Real Engineering Challenges of Augmented Reality

LOCATION ADDRESS (Hybrid, in person or by zoom, you choose)
Valley Research Park
319 North Bernardo Avenue
Mountain View, CA CA 93043
Don’t use the front door. When facing the front door, turn right along the front of the building. Turn left around the building corner. The 2nd door should be open and have a banner and event registration.

If you want to join remotely, you can submit questions via Zoom Q&A. The zoom link:
[https://acm-org.zoom.us/j/95226212956?pwd=HnAedzSDGcYAYsCzTuavIvMYMFtILa.1](https://acm-org.zoom.us/j/95226212956?pwd=HnAedzSDGcYAYsCzTuavIvMYMFtILa.1)
Join via YouTube:
[https://youtube.com/live/cu5TDl8N2Mk](https://youtube.com/live/cu5TDl8N2Mk)

AGENDA
6:30 Door opens, food and networking (we invite honor system contributions)
**7:00** SFBayACM upcoming events, introduce the speaker
7:15 speaker presentation starts
8:15 – 8:30 finish, depending on Q&A

Join SF Bay ACM Chapter for an insightful discussion on:

**Talk Description**:
Talk description: Augmented Reality is often talked about in terms of its potential, but what does it actually take to build it? This talk offers a candid, high-level look at the engineering challenges that make AR glasses hard, from power and thermals to silicon design, and what it means to optimize at every layer of the stack to bring a product to life.

Reading material/blogs:
[https://www.meta.com/blog/orion-ar-glasses-augmented-reality/](https://www.meta.com/blog/orion-ar-glasses-augmented-reality/)
[https://www.meta.com/blog/boz-to-the-future-episode-22-wearables-orion-ray-ban-meta-alex-himel/](https://www.meta.com/blog/boz-to-the-future-episode-22-wearables-orion-ray-ban-meta-alex-himel/)
[https://www.meta.com/blog/orion-compute-puck-reality-labs-next-computing-platform/](https://www.meta.com/blog/orion-compute-puck-reality-labs-next-computing-platform/)
[https://www.meta.com/blog/orion-custom-silicon-chips-ip-blocks-accelerators-ar-algorithms-energy-efficiency-reality-labs/](https://www.meta.com/blog/orion-custom-silicon-chips-ip-blocks-accelerators-ar-algorithms-energy-efficiency-reality-labs/)

**Speaker Bio**:
**Shanmathi Natarajan is a Silicon Power Architect with experience at Meta Reality Labs, where she led end-to-end power architecture for next-generation AR glasses. Her work spanned the full silicon lifecycle, from early-stage SoC power modeling and architectural exploration to post-silicon validation and real-world correlation, with a focus on turning high-level design intent into measurable efficiency gains on final silicon.**
**Her work includes driving significant use-case power reductions on wearable SoCs, directly enabling better battery life and user experience on AR devices. Her expertise spans low-power design methodologies, hardware-software co-design, DVFS and power state architecture, and cross-layer optimization across compute, memory, and interconnect subsystems.**
**Her research interests lie at the hardware-software boundary, where low-level architectural decisions in AR glasses, GPU architectures, and energy-constrained systems translate directly into product-level impact.**

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanmathi-natarajan

—

Valley Research Park is a coworking research campus of 104,000 square feet hosting 60+ life science and technology companies. VRP has over 100 dry labs, wet labs, and high power labs sized from 125-15,000 square feet. VRP manages all of the traditional office elements: break rooms, conference rooms, outdoor dining spaces, and recreational spaces.

As a plug-and-play lab space, once companies have secured their next milestone and are ready to expand, VRP has 100+ labs ready to expand into.
https://www.valleyresearchpark.com/