(Credit: AMD)
AMD is riding the AI wave with its newest laptop processors. The company today introduced the Ryzen 8040 series, which are designed to run generative AI programs locally on consumer PCs.
The Ryzen 8040 series, codenamed “Hawk Point,” still uses the Zen 4 architecture found in the Ryzen 7040 mobile chip series, first introduced in January. Both chip families also feature similar clock speeds. The difference is the processing dedicated to AI programs. AMD has found a way to squeeze even more performance from the XDNA AI engine integrated into the silicon.
(Credit: AMD)This means the 8040 series can offer up to 40% performance gains compared to the 7040 series processors while running the AI chatbot Llama 2 and other image-recognition models, such as ResNet 50 and Inception V4. Specifically, the the 8040's AI-focused processing can reach 39 Tera Operations per Second, up from 33 TOPS in the 7040 family.
(Credit: AMD)The company also tested the 8040 series against Intel’s 13th generation “Raptor Lake” laptop processors. The benchmarks suggest AMD’s silicon can perform better, especially on gaming and Cinebench and Geekbench testing software, thanks in part to the built-in Radeon GPU.
(Credit: AMD)Still, the benchmarks only give us a snapshot of their performance while omitting other details. For example, AMD refrained from benchmarking the 8040 series against its own 7040 chips for general computing tasks or with AI image generation. Meanwhile, rival Intel is preparing to launch its own AI-powered Meteor Lake processors to succeed the 13th generation chips this month. Hence, we’ll need to try out the 8040 series to get a better view of their performance.
In the meantime, users can expect the Ryzen 8040 series to start arriving in consumer laptops in Q1. The company will release nine chips across the 8040 family, and all of them will feature the dedicated XDNA AI engine, except the two lower-end Ryzen 3 processors.
(Credit: AMD)Acer is already preparing to adopt the chips for the Nitro V 16 gaming laptop, which is set to launch in March starting at $999.99. The Windows 11 PC will feature a 16-inch screen with a 165Hz refresh rate, a dual cooling fan system, and room for an Nvidia RTX 4000 series mobile GPU.
During a press briefing, AMD also revealed “Strix Point,” another class of Ryzen chips slated to arrive sometime next year. These chips will feature even more powerful AI processing through a new XDNA 2 engine, which is “going to open the door to greater usage of generative AI on your PC,” says AMD marketing manager Donny Woligroski. This will amount to a 3x performance gain for generative AI programs, the company claims.
(Credit: AMD)