AMD continues to push its AI story this year with the introduction of its Ryzen Pro 8000 series of processors. This is the natural cadence that AMD has when it releases its newest processors: at the beginning of the year for consumer laptops and then a few months later with the commercial Pro series of products that include enhanced security and manageability features for enterprise use. In this case, AMD first launched the Ryzen 8000 series for laptops, which it followed with the Ryzen 8000G for desktops; now the company has launched the Ryzen Pro 8000 series. These products all fall within what AMD calls its “Pervasive AI” portfolio, which incorporates products from the data center to the edge to the client and bridges most of the company’s newest products.
AMD Ryzen Pro 8040 Series For Laptops
The Ryzen Pro 8040 series targets the commercial notebook segment with a lineup of processors ranging from 15 watts up to 54 watts and six to eight CPU cores. Similar to its consumer lineup, all these processors except for the low-end 8540U come with AMD’s NPU for AI processing capabilities. AMD believes that this new lineup of Ryzen Pro processors will directly compete with Intel’s Core Ultra family of processors at the same wattage and running the same professional workloads.
However, AMD is not just touting performance leadership; it is also claiming that it delivers better performance along with better battery life, at least for watching videos. Battery life claims are among the hardest to evaluate because every user’s behavior is different, and many companies focus on playing videos as the best way to measure battery life. That said, AMD is not only looking for performance and battery life leadership, but also AI thought leadership by comparing itself directly to the Intel Core Ultra 155H for AI performance.
Ryzen Pro 8000 For Desktops
As with the notebook parts, the Ryzen Pro 8000G/E series for desktop is a commercial flavor of AMD’s consumer offerings. AMD is introducing eight new processors spanning 35-watt to 65-watt TDPs and ranging from four cores up to eight. AMD is comparing its Ryzen 7 Pro 8700G processor to Intel’s Core i7 14700 series processors, showing competitive performance across many workloads. These new products also represent the first time AMD is bringing AI to the commercial desktop, following in the footsteps of the Ryzen 8000G released in late January 2024; that was the first desktop PC processor with onboard AI processing.
However, one major difference with the Ryzen Pro 8000G/E series is that the lower-end parts do not have an NPU for efficient AI execution. This means that AMD is continuing to propagate the mistake it made with the consumer 8000G series in these commercial parts. I believe that this mistake will create confusion among the enterprise IT decision makers looking at AMD’s lineup, and that it will impede AMD’s installation of base AI processors in commercial desktops.
Security And Connectivity
AMD’s Ryzen Pro line incorporates AMD’s Pro Security features, which include hardware and software security designed to enable both ISVs and OEMs to enhance the system’s security. Because AMD’s Ryzen Pro 8000 series comes with Microsoft Pluton security integrated, the company and its partners can offer Microsoft’s “chip-to-cloud” protection. Additionally, AMD’s Pro series comes with AMD Memory Guard to protect sensitive business data when a PC is lost or stolen. AMD also believes that its manageability is better than Intel’s; indeed, it commissioned a study that claims AMD’s manageability is 41% faster to deploy than Intel’s vPro.
AMD has partnered with Qualcomm for Wi-Fi 7 connectivity on the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 with Ryzen Pro 8040. The company also partnered with MediaTek on two HP systems that have Wi-Fi 7 connectivity. In all, across HP and Lenovo alone, there are 11 systems (laptop and desktop) launching with Ryzen Pro 8000 series processors.
Wrapping Up
AMD has fielded a competitive lineup with its Ryzen Pro 8000 series of processors, especially on the notebook side, where all of its SKUs offer an NPU for AI compute as a standard feature. I believe that AMD should offer just as many AI SKUs for desktops as for laptops. Considering how hard it will be to get developers to build AI apps in any case, it was a mistake to not include AI everywhere—like Intel and Qualcomm have done with their new products.
AMD has clearly satisfied Lenovo and HP with its latest Ryzen Pro series of products, and now we just need to see how well they sell compared to their Intel counterparts. AMD does not yet have much competition on the desktop side for AI compute, so I believe it will be able to claim AI desktop leadership, at least in the short term. I expect Intel will not be far behind in bringing more AI to the desktop, while seemingly all new laptop parts include NPUs. That may just be a sign of the importance of the laptop versus the desktop for OEMs in the PC sector.
Moor Insights & Strategy provides or has provided paid services to technology companies, like all tech industry research and analyst firms. These services include research, analysis, advising, consulting, benchmarking, acquisition matchmaking and video and speaking sponsorships. Of the companies mentioned in this article, Moor Insights & Strategy currently has (or has had) a paid business relationship with AMD, HP, Intel, Lenovo, MediaTek, Microsoft and Qualcomm.
