AMD Ryzen Pro 8000 CPUs With AI, Security for Business PCs Announced

AMD is strengthening its proposition in the business PC space with its new Ryzen Pro 8000 series CPUs for desktops and laptops. In addition to performance and power efficiency improvements, AMD touts its integrated graphics capabilities and claims significant advantages over its competition in the growing field of AI applications. The Ryzen Pro 8000 desktop CPUs are said to be the first of their kind with integrated NPUs (Neural Processing Units) for AI acceleration. 

According to industry research cited by AMD, 60 percent of all PCs shipped by the year 2027 will have AI processing capabilities, and business owners expect to be running generative AI workloads on each worker’s PC within the next decade. Collaboration, portability, and remote PC management are priorities for businesses, especially in the post-pandemic world, and the need to run AI workloads securely without cloud connectivity is expected to drive a new wave of PC upgrades and replacements.  

Over 150 software vendors have already partnered with AMD to optimise their software, including Adobe, Microsoft, Solidworks, Blender, Webex, OBS, Cyberlink, Zoom, Tencent, Ubisoft. AMD’s Ryzen Pro CPUs are differentiated from their mainstream counterparts by enabling additional security and management features, including a new cloud-based remote management tool that can streamline deployment.

Also read: CES 2024: AMD Unveils New Automotive Devices for Infotainment and Safety

The newly announced Ryzen Pro 8040 laptop processors (codenamed "Hawk Point") are available in U and HS variants, targeting 15-28W and 35-54W TDP ranges respectively. They are fabricated using a 4nm process node. Eight CPU models have been announced, and only one, the lowest-end Ryzen 5 Pro 8540U, lacks an integrated NPU for AI acceleration. These chips have CPU cores based on the ‘Zen 4’ architecture and GPUs leveraging the RDNA3 architecture.

The top-end Ryzen 9 Pro 8945HS, aimed at the mobile workstation segment, has 8 cores and 16 threads, with a 5.2GHz peak speed. AMD’s own internal tests, using CPU performance and AI benchmarks, show it tied with or exceeding the performance of an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H, both running at 45W. In a scenario with a video conference running, AMD claims up to 46 percent better battery life than a comparable laptop powered by an Intel processor, even exceeding an Apple M3 Pro-powered MacBook. In workloads that leverage AI, such as video upscaling, face recognition, document analysis and text-to-image generation, AMD claims between 4 percent and 85 percent better performance than Intel.

For mainstream thin-and-light business laptops too, AMD claims better multitasking, performance, and power efficiency than competition from Intel. In its own productivity, content creation and graphics tests, the company says its Ryzen 7 Pro 8840U delivers double-digit percentage performance gains compared to Intel’s Core Ultra 7 165U at the same 15W TDP. 

The Ryzen Pro 8000 series APUs for business desktops (codenamed 'Phoenix') also use Zen 4 and RDNA3, with AMD boasting that its integrated graphics capabilities eliminate the need for entry-level discrete GPUs. Of the eight models launched, across 45-65W G and 35W GE variants, four feature integrated NPUs while the lower half of the lineup does not. AMD also claims more power efficiency than competing Intel CPUs when processing video for conference calls. 

Lenovo and HP have already announced new laptop, mobile workstation, and desktop PC models based on these new CPUs. AMD has also partnered with Qualcomm and MediaTek to promote Wi-Fi 7 for faster data transfers and lower latency, along with Bluetooth 5.4 which offers extended range and better power efficiency.