Qualcomm plans to unveil a dedicated chip to power standalone virtual-reality and augmented-reality headsets at next week's Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California.

Accoding to Bloomberg's unconfirmed report, the system-on-a-chip, to be called Snapdragon XR1, will pack with a main processing unit, a graphics processor, security functions and components to handle artificial intelligence tasks. The chip will also tackle voice control and head-tracking interaction with headsets.

The chipmaker will team up with a number of existing headset makers that plan to include the chip, including HTC for its Vive headset and Vuzix Corp., which makes AR headsets, the report added.

The product is designed to make it easier for hardware manufacturers to build headsets that are cheap, powerful and energy-efficient.

Facebook launched the Oculus Go with a Qualcomm smartphone chip, while Google has also partnered on standalone headsets that use a Qualcomm phone processor.

Apple is also developing its own chip for augmented-reality glasses that it plans to sell as early as 2020.