While fellow graphic processing maker Nvidia has taken the lead role in the push for AI technolgy, it seems that AMD has been slow in adapting. It has been no secret that AMD has been working on consumer AI for a while now, and we're right here in Taipei to witness them unveiling this in person.
If you'd like, you may watch the full keynote below:
Table of Contents
Gaming First
In stark contrast with Nvidia's presentation - AMD opened their presentation this morning with an announcement of the next generation Ryzen product: the Ryzen 9000 series, which is expected to be released in July.
Based on Zen 5 architecture, the new processor is set to offer a significant performance improvement over Zen 4, with an average IPC increase of 16% in desktop workloads for Zen 5 and similar turbo speeds to the Ryzen 7000 series but with better performance due to architectural improvements.
Four new SKUs were unveiled, including the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X with 16 cores and a boost speed up to 5.7 GHz, designed for high performance and overclocking. The Ryzen 9000 series will use the AM5 socket, maintaining compatibility with existing platforms while introducing new X870E and X870 chipsets that support USB 4.0 and Wi-Fi 7.
AI Computing
Aside from gaming, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su followed up by announcing their next AI CPU, the Ryzen AI 300-series. The major difference with their mainstream CPUs is that it's a made-for-mobile processors equipped with NPUs (neural processing units) that power AIs, such as what we see in co-pilot laptops that are the star of the show throughout Computex.
Lisa claimed that the new Ryzen AI 300 is almost 30% more powerful than the Apple M3, and already better than Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite, as well as Intel's upcoming AI CPUs. One of the major players in the push towards "AI CPU" is Microsoft, who also briefly took the stage to share what we can expect from Copilot+, their next step-up for the ChatGPT-like assistant.
What we know for sure, however, is the Ryzen AI 300 is equipped with an NPU that is sufficiently powerful to run Windows Copilot locally (50 TOPS), which makes it the only processor thus far that is capable of doing so.
Laptop Partnerships
Thus far, several laptop manufacturers the likes of HP, Asus and Lenovo have taken the stage to showcase their next-generation AI laptops, and how AMD can help increase productivity. Many of these products will be made available to us from Q3 and beyond.
As with a lot of product announcements, we are seeing really promising and exciting claims on how the Ryzen AI can augment the AI experience on laptops - both for productivity and even leisure. Obviously, we cannot verify all these at this moment, but we'll know pretty soon since a lot of these products are coming up as early as next month.
For more Computex coverage, be sure to follow this space.