“We’re probably the only company that has all the parts” — AMD on why it’s ahead of rivals Nvidia and Intel when it comes to AI PCs
AMD has set out to bring the best AI PC experience to users everywhere, leaving some of its biggest competitors behind.
As AI becomes an increasingly integral part of our work and private lives, the need for the right hardware to benefit from developments is greater than ever.
It’s likely that many consumers will first experience the technology through AI PCs. Platforms like Microsoft’s Copilot+ deliver productivity and efficiency benefits for everyone.
Window of Opportunities
In a hyper-competitive market, AMD is keen to stake its claim to leadership, a key spokesperson for the company told a media briefing attended by Ny Breaking that only it could provide the full hardware experience.
“We’re probably the only company that has all three pieces,” said Jack Huynh, SVP and GM, Computing and Graphics, at AMD, noting that Nvidia has yet to unveil any serious challengers in the APU market among its rivals, and Intel is in the same situation when it comes to data center GPUs.
“There is an opportunity in the arms race, so we are moving forward as quickly as possible,” Huynh added, highlighting AMD’s slate of new releases and announcements at Computex 2024, most notably the Ryzen AI 300 series, as evidence of his desire.
“Part of our vision is that if you have the same IP powering the data center, the cloud and the edge, we can actually create technical efficiencies, but also better security, and that’s what enterprises care about.”
Huynh noted that AMD is focused on talking to software companies to understand their needs when it comes to AI PCs. He cited Adobe, Zoom and Microsoft as key partners.
“Our goal is to aggressively catch up in the next three to five years,” he said. “We’re overinvesting in software right now.”
This also includes the ambitious goal of creating a uniform software architecture for NPUs. Huynh explains how AMD wants to make it easier for developers to build with an NPU, because it offers the best performance per watt.
“Our goal is to make the time to deployment as fast as possible and get the best of both worlds,” he noted. “We want to make sure we’re not just building a solution to a problem — we want to really understand what developers want to do and what you want to enable.”
AI PC journey
Huynh admitted that AI PCs will need more training from OEMs and companies like AMD to appeal to the masses, especially since customers typically have to spend more money on a new device than they would before.
He noted that AMD is in no hurry when it comes to developing AI PCs: “This is going to require a tremendous amount of education — but to me, this is just the beginning, it’s a journey, we’re excited about it… I think because we’re reviving the PC, we’re going to maintain this AI leadership.”
“Launching a product when it is ready is very important… I believe we have one chance together with the end users to establish that the AI PC is an innovative product.”
“AI is going ten times faster than the internet…(it’s) the new electricity – it’s going to be everywhere and power everything, so it’s so important for us now to be an AI-first company.”