AMD reveals a full stack of shiny new Ryzen laptop processors, supercharged with AI
After a catty attack from Intel, AMD has just announced the next wave of Ryzen processors we'll see next year best laptops – no fewer than nine new chips, all bearing the name Ryzen 8040 and equipped with AMD's 'XDNA' AI technology.
The new processors, codenamed 'Hawk Point', are already on their way to laptop manufacturers and will be available in new devices in early 2024. They'll all use AMD's Zen 4 CPU core architecture and RDNA 3 graphics architecture, with the flagship being the Ryzen 9 8945HS (catchy, I know). I was happy to see that AMD isn't abandoning the low-spec chips either, with a quad-core Ryzen 3 8440U set to bring the XDNA neural engine to more affordable laptops.
While much of AMD's press release was quite focused on enterprise applications of on-chip AI (rather than consumer use cases), the key takeaway here – aside from the fact that we're getting a ton of new chips – is that local AI is on about to become a lot more widespread.
Bot on your laptop
AMD has already introduced it neural processing unit (NPU) in the Ryzen 7040 series, and it represented a significant step forward in the expansion of local AI. For the uninitiated, “local” AI refers to on-chip machine learning capabilities, allowing you to run AI-powered workloads locally – unlike popular AI tools like ChatGPT, which currently rely on cloud computing to allow users to run them from their devices have access to.
There are plenty of benefits to on-chip AI: For starters, it doesn't require a mandatory internet connection to use as there is no cloud server involved. Keeping things on your device (in this case, a wave of new Ryzen laptops from major manufacturers like Asus, Acer, and Lenovo) can also eliminate some of the security concerns around AI, as you don't have to upload data to an external platform. .
The Ryzen 8040 news came alongside an 'AI roadmap' from AMD, which detailed that 2024 will also play host to the next generation of 'Strix Point' processors – which, importantly, will include the second-generation XDNA 2 NPU. AMD promises “more than 3x generative AI NPU performance” compared to the first-generation XDNA NPU, a big step forward if Team Red can deliver.
Apart from Strix Point, the upcoming Hawk Point chips look very impressive. AMD has claimed that the chips offer a 1.4x performance boost in generative AI workloads compared to the Ryzen 7040 series, and has also provided some comparison figures with Intel's current i9-13900H, noting that the flagship 8040 chip in should outperform its Intel counterpart in almost every regard. area. Needless to say, these are some of the best processors around, and I'm excited to get my hands on one of these new laptops!