AMD has unveiled its new Ryzen Pro 8000-series processors, marking a significant step in bringing AI engines to the commercial market. The company has extended its Ryzen Pro portfolio with the ‘Hawk Point’ 8040-series for commercial laptop and workstation users, and the Ryzen 8000 ‘Phoenix’ APU models for commercial desktop PCs.
The Pro series is based on AMD’s existing consumer-oriented processor models but comes with additional features tailored for the commercial market. With the consumer versions of these processors, AMD was the first x86 company to bring its AI-processing neural processing unit (NPU) to the mobile and desktop PC market. These AI acceleration features are now headed to commercial users, allowing AMD to claim the title of being the first with professional CPUs armed with NPUs for laptops and workstations.
AMD’s in-built XNDA engine powers the NPU, and the company touts that its mobile processors have an advantage over Intel’s competing Core Ultra processors with 16 TOPS of NPU performance, outperforming the Meteor Lake NPU’s 11 TOPS. AMD also maintains a slimmer lead in overall system TOPS, which includes both the CPU and GPU AI processing power, taking the lead with 39 TOPS over Intel’s 34 TOPS. AMD’s desktop Ryzen 8000 APUs also have an in-built NPU engine that delivers 16 TOPS, whereas Intel has yet to release a processor for desktop PCs with an integrated AI engine.
The ability to run AI workloads locally helps alleviate critical privacy concerns in the commercial space. It also delivers latency, performance, and battery life advantages for AI applications. However, unleashing that performance requires tightly coupled software solutions, and in many respects, the early war for AI dominance will come down to developer partnerships.
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