AMD Announces New Ryzen Pro Portfolio for Commercial AI PCs

AMD revealed today its new Ryzen Pro 8000 Series desktop CPUs and Ryzen Pro 8040 Series mobile chips for commercial AI PCs. This new Ryzen Pro portfolio builds on the consumer-focused Ryzen 8000G and Ryzen 8040 chips announced just a couple of months ago, with the addition of AMD Pro security and management features for IT Pros.

Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm have all been talking about 2024 being the year of the “AI PC.” However, AMD is currently a bit ahead of the curve with 4nm desktop and mobile chips with integrated NPUs for both consumers and commercial users.

“As we continue to expand our AI PC leadership, we are bringing more power and efficiency to a wide array of desktops and mobile PCs,” said Jack Huynh, senior vice president and general manager, Computing and Graphics Group at AMD. “Our latest PRO series processors set a new standard for premium computing experiences and help businesses deploy AI capabilities across their PCs with leadership performance and security.”

The Ryzen Pro 8040 Series lineup includes 8 different chips starting with the Ryzen 5 Pro 8540U with 6 cores and 12 threads, and ending with the top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 Pro 8945HS with 8 cores and 16 threads. AMD promises up to 30% better CPU performance compared to a machine with an Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU, but AMD claims to have an even bigger advantage on select workloads like video conferencing.

“With AMD Ryzen AI on select models and powerful AMD RDNA 3 graphics integrated on the chip, this latest series delivers the up to 72% faster performance and 84% less power for video conferencing with or without AI experiences enabled vs. the Intel Core Ultra 7 165U,” the company said today.

To be clear, what AMD calls “Ryzen AI”, which is only built into some of its latest Ryzen Pro chips, is the combination of its AI engine, its AMD Radeon graphics engine, and Ryzen processor cores that enable AI capabilities. Ryzen AI first made its debut in last year’s Ryzen Pro 7000 series CPUs, so it’s not exactly new.

Moving on to the Ryzen Pro 8000 Series desktop CPU lineup, there are also 8 different chips with up to eight cores and 16 threads, and again, Ryzen AI isn’t available on all of them. Anyway, AMD promises up to 47% CPU performance and 3x better graphics performance on its top-of-the-line Ryzen 7 PRO 8700G compared to a system with an Intel Core i7 14700 processor. The latter comes from Intel’s “Raptor Lake” refresh from January, and unlike Intel’s Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” chips, it has no integrated NPU.

AMD’s new Ryzen Pro portfolio will support the new Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 standards, as well as cutting-edge security and manageability features through AMD Pro technologies. The company’s latest Ryzen Pro CPUs also integrate Microsoft’s Pluton security processor designed to protect sensitive information on Windows 11 PCs. AMD’s Ryzen Pro 8000 Series desktop processors and 8040 Series mobile CPUs will be available in new laptops, workstations, and desktop PCs from HP, Lenovo, and other partners starting in Q2 2024.