AMD's new Ryzen 8040 processors go heavy on AI

AMD is beating Intel to the punch by announcing its next-generation laptop processors, the Ryzen 8040 series, fully based on the Zen 4 architecture. The new series of processors will focus heavily on AI with the new XDNA-based neural processing unit (NPU), and on paper, it looks nearly identical to the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 processors. In fact, AMD barely goes into any details about CPU or GPU performance compared to its predecessors.

The company does claim that the new AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS offers up to 64% faster video editing and 37% faster 3D rendering compared to 13th-generation Intel Core i9 processor. However, clock speeds look exactly the same on this new model compared to the Ryzen 9 7940HS, so it looks like barely anything has changed. These models also pack the same Radeon 700M series integrated GPUs based on RDNA3, so there are no big changes here, either.

Instead, all of the focus seems to be on AI, with most of the new laptop processors featuring an NPU based on the XDNA architecture, offering support for Ryzen AI, which allows AI models to run natively and efficiently on device, instead of being pushed to the cloud. This enabled features like Windows Studio Effects, which includes background blur, face tracking, and voice focus, for example. AMD claims that the NPU in the Ryzen 8040 series is up to 1.6 times faster than the previous Zen 4-based processors, allowing for more AI-intensive tasks to run on device without gobbling up CPU resources.

“We continue to deliver high performance and power-efficient NPUs with Ryzen AI technology to reimagine the PC,” said Jack Huynh, SVP and GM of AMD computing and graphics business. “The increased AI capabilities of the 8040 series will now handle larger models to enable the next phase of AI user experiences.”

The new AMD Ryzen 8040 lineup

Here's a breakdown of the Ryzen 8040 series processors announced today:

Laptops with these processors have already started being announced, including the new Acer Nitro V 16. However, availability is only expected in the first quarter of 2021, with companies like Lenovo, HP, and Dell also committing to launching new laptops powered by Ryzen 8040.

Ryzen AI Software is also available

AMD also announced the availability of Ryzen AI Software, a suite of tools enabling developers to build AI apps and deploy machine learning models more easily, running them locally on laptops with Ryzen AI support. This enables ONNX Runtime apps and models trained on PyTorch or TensorFlow to run on supported processors, and it also includes some optimized models on the Hugging Face catalog so users can get up and running more easily.

Developers can use models to enable advanced gesture recognition, biometric authentication, and even speech recognition, as well as leverage large language models to enable AI features in their apps. Of course, AMD likely won't be alone in enabling these kinds of features, as AI has been a big focus for every tech company. You can expect to hear about it from Intel as well, when the company introduces its Meteor Lake processors.