AMD's Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" series desktop processors are expected to be released on July 31st. The Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" series notebooks will hit stores earlier, on July 15th. This information comes from product listings on various e-commerce sites, as reported by ITHome and Videocardz. Additionally, a BestBuy listing shows one ASUS laptop with a Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" CPU launching on July 15th, ahead of the desktop processor release.

ITHome also reported potential retail prices for the AMD Ryzen 9 series CPUs, at least for the Philippine market. Worldwide prices may be lower or higher depending on taxes in each region.

• Ryzen 9 9950X: $648
• Ryzen 9 9900X: $597
• Ryzen 7 9700X: $409
• Ryzen 5 9600X: $315

The top-spec AMD Ryzen AI 9 300 series "Strix Point" processor, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, is expected to post a 20% performance improvement over both the CPU and integrated graphics fronts, over its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 8945HS "Hawk Point," according to leak by Golden Pig Upgrade. On the CPU front, the HX 370 packs a 12-core/24-thread CPU based on a combination of four "Zen 5" and eight "Zen 5c" cores. The single-thread performance gains on the basis of the "Zen 5" microarchitecture's generational IPC increase, besides higher clock speeds; while the multithreaded performance increases on account on more cores. This performance increase isn't linearly scaling with the 50% increase in core-count.

On "Hawk Point," all eight cores are "Zen 4," capable of boosting to high frequencies, with two of them being marked as CPPC preferred cores, capable of boosting the highest. On "Strix Point," however, only four cores are based on the "Zen 5" architecture and capable of boosting to high frequency bands; while the other eight are "Zen 5c," which don't boost as high. While the IPC of "Zen 5c" is identical to "Zen 5," the fact that it doesn't boost as high, means that the generational multithreaded performance gain from the core-count increase is expected to be closer to 20%, with Golden Pig Upgrade talking about a Cinebench R23 nT score of over 20000 points, with "Hawk Point" scoring around 16000 points.

AMD on Monday launched its Ryzen AI 300 line of mobile processors based on the 4 nm "Strix Point" monolithic silicon. This chip was described by AMD as having a maximum CPU core configuration of 12-core/24-thread, which would be a neat 50% increase in core-counts over the previous generation; but there's more to it. Although "Strix Point" implements "Zen 5," not all 12 CPU cores on the silicon are the regular variant of "Zen 5." The chip physically has four "Zen 5" cores, and eight "Zen 5c" compact cores. Nemez (GPUsAreMagic) attempted to annotate the "Strix Point" die based a high-resolution photo by System360Cheese from AMD's Computex keynote; and there are some interesting findings.

The annotation reveals that the four regular "Zen 5" cores, each with a 1 MB dedicated L2 cache, share a 16 MB L3 cache. The eight "Zen 5c" cores, on the other hand, appear to share a smaller 8 MB L3 cache, in what could be a separate CCX. They each have a 1 MB L2 cache, too. The "Zen 5c" cores have the same IPC as the "Zen 5" cores when measured with common INT and FP benchmarks that don't move a lot of data; however, it could lag behind in workloads with a lot of streaming data. What's more, the previous generation "Zen 4c" cores were traditionally limited to lower frequencies than regular "Zen 4" cores, as the physically compacted cores couldn't hold onto higher core voltages. If that's the case with "Zen 5c," then what we're really looking at with "Strix Point" is an interesting hybrid core setup with eight high-IPC efficiency cores.

AMD today launched its Ryzen AI 300 series mobile processors, codenamed "Strix Point." These chips implement a combination of the AMD "Zen 5" microarchitecture for the CPU cores, the XDNA 2 architecture for its powerful new NPU, and the RDNA 3+ graphics architecture for its 33% faster iGPU. The new "Zen 5" microarchitecture provides a 16% generational IPC uplift over "Zen 4" on the backs of several front-end enhancements, wider execution pipelines, more intra core bandwidth, and a revamped FPU that doubles performance of AI and AVX-512 workloads. AMD didn't go in-depth with the microarchitecture, but the broad points of "Zen 5" are detailed in our article for the Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" desktop processors. Not only is AMD using these faster "Zen 5" CPU cores, but also increased the CPU core count by 50%, for a maximum of 12-core/24-thread.

The "Strix Point" monolithic silicon is built on the 4 nm foundry node, and packs a CPU core complex (CCX) with 12 CPU cores, four of these are "Zen 5," which can achieve the highest possible boost frequencies, the other eight are "Zen 5c" cores that feature an identical IPC and the full ISA, including support for SMT; but don't boost as high as the "Zen 5" cores. AMD is claiming a productivity performance increase ranging between 4% and 73% for its top model based in the series, when compared to Intel's Core Ultra 9 185H "Meteor Lake" processor. The iGPU sees its compute unit (CU) count go all the way up to 16 from 12 in the previous generation, and this yields a claimed 33% increase in iGPU gaming performance compared to the integrated Arc graphics of the Core Ultra 9 185H. Lastly, the XDNA 2 NPU sees more that triple the AI inference performance to 50 AI TOPS, compared to the 16 TOPS of the Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" processor, and 12 TOPS of Core Ultra "Meteor Lake." This makes the processor meet Microsoft's Copilot+ AI PC requirements.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen AI "Strix Point" mobile processor family will see a product launch in August 2024, with availability ramping up by October, a representative of mini PC manufacturer AOOSTAR has revealed. This would mean that at Computex next month, the company will use its Keynote address to unveil the processors, highlight their various new features, particularly the "Zen 5" microarchitecture, and perhaps even talk about performance in broad strokes, but specific processor models will launch in August, along with a few notebook product announcements.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen AI "Strix Point" processor will feature a significantly faster 50 AI TOPS-class NPU to power Microsoft Copilot+ certified devices; increased CPU performance from the new "Zen 5" architecture, and faster graphics from the new RDNA 3+ iGPU, besides support for faster memory speeds, new power management features, and updated platform and display I/O. "Strix Point" is far from being the only mobile processor family from AMD based on "Zen 5," there's also the Ryzen 9000 "Fire Range" family of high core-count mobile processors meant for gaming notebooks; and the "Strix Halo" meant for high-performance ultraportables.

Merely two weeks ago, we published a story on AMD possibly preparing a new processor naming scheme for its ultraportable segment next-generation processors. Today, various trustful Chinese sources reported that AMD changed its mind again, that the Ryzen AI 100 series naming scheme was dropped, and now we should prepare for the Ryzen AI 300. If this turns out to be true, then AMD Strix Point will launch as Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Ryzen AI 9 365 (assuming AMD does not change the naming scheme again).

AMD on Monday said that its 2024 Computex Keynote address slated for June 3, will see a slew of next-generation product announcements. "Join us as Dr. Lisa Su delivers the Computex 2024 opening keynote and shares the latest on how AMD and our partners are pushing the envelope with our next generation of high-performance PC, data center and AI solutions," the brief release said.

AMD is widely expected to unveil its next-generation Ryzen 9000 "Strix Point" mobile processors for AI PCs capable of powering the recently announced Microsoft Copilot+, its next-generation Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" desktop processors, its 5th Generation EPYC "Turin" server processors, and possibly even its next-generation Radeon RX RDNA 4 generation. At the heart of all its processor announcements is the new "Zen 5" CPU microarchitecture that's expected to introduce an over 10% IPC improvement with significant improvements in AVX512 performance over "Zen 4," which should benefit certain kinds of AI workloads.

AMD is rumored to be discontinuing driver support for the Windows 10 operating system for its next-generation mobile processors, starting with the upcoming Ryzen 9000 "Strix Point" (and possibly "Strix Halo" and other chips from the generation). This would mean a lack of official drivers for the XDNA 2 NPU, SoC components, and possibly even the iGPU. This who know their way around manual driver installation might have some luck getting the Windows 11 drivers to work on Windows 10, but for the most part, notebooks and pre-built SFF desktops powered by these chips will not come with Windows 10 preinstalled, since there won't be any official drivers from AMD.

The CPU of Ryzen 9000 "Strix Point" processors should still very much work with Windows 10. This however doesn't cover the upcoming Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" desktop processors, which have minimal hardware that need drivers, except for the basic iGPU they pack. Microsoft is discontinuing Windows 10 from regular updates on October 14, 2025. Those who want to hold on to the operating system need to pay for extended security update plans that get progressively pricier with each year.

A product roadmap leak at leading PC OEM Dell, disclosed the tentative launch dates of several future generations of processors by Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. The slide was detailing hardware platforms for future revisions of the company's premium XPS notebooks. Given that Dell remains one of the largest PC OEMs, the dates revealed in the leaked slides are highly plausible.

In chronological order, Dell expects Intel's Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake-MX" processor in September 2024, which should mean product unveilings at Computex. It's interesting to note that Intel is only designing "Lunar Lake" for the -MX memory-on-package segment. This chip squares off against Apple's M3, M4, and possibly even the M3 Pro. Intel also has its ambitious "Arrow Lake" architecture planned for the second half of 2024, hence the lack of product overlap—there won't be an "Arrow Lake-MX."

Leaked Lenovo product flyers point to the possibility of AMD's next-generation "Strix Point" mobile processor getting the processor numbering scheme of Ryzen 8050 series. The Lenovo flyer describes a ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 business notebook. Lending credence to the theory of the 8050 series being "Strix Point" is the numeral "5." The Ryzen 7030 series processors were based on the "Rembrand-R" silicon and the "Zen 3" microarchitecture. The Ryzen 7040 series were based on the newer "Phoenix" silicon, and "Zen 4." The current 8040 series chips are based on the "Hawk Point" silicon, and the existing "Zen 4" microarchitecture. See where this is going? The Ryzen 8050 series will hence be based on "Strix Point," featuring the latest "Zen 5" CPU cores, besides other cool stuff, such as a 50 AI TOPS-class NPU, and an updated iGPU based on the RDNA 3+ architecture. AMD's 2024 Computex address promises to be action-packed, with announcements expected across the client- and commercial processor spaces based on "Zen 5," next-gen EPYC "Zen 5" server processors, and perhaps even the Radeon RX RDNA 4.

AMD's next-generation Ryzen 9000 "Strix Point" mobile processor, which succeeds the current Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" and Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix," is confirmed to feature a CPU core-configuration of 12-core/24-thread, according to a specs-leak by HKEPC citing sources among notebook OEMs. It appears like Computex 2024 will be big for AMD, with the company preparing next-gen processor announcements across the desktop and notebook lines. Both the "Strix Point" mobile processor and "Granite Ridge" desktop processor debut the company's next "Zen 5" microarchitecture.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from "Zen 5" is that AMD has increased the number of CPU cores per CCX from 8 in "Zen 3" and "Zen 4," to 12 in "Zen 5." While this doesn't affect the core-counts of its CCD chiplets (which are still expected to be 8-core), the "Strix Point" processor appears to use one giant CCX with 12 cores. Each of the "Zen 5" cores has a 1 MB dedicated L2 cache, while the 12 cores share a 24 MB L3 cache. The 12-core/24-thread CPU, besides the generational IPC gains introduced by "Zen 5," marks a 50% increase in CPU muscle over "Hawk Point." It's not just the CPU complex, even the iGPU sees a hardware update.

Intel at its VISION conference, confirmed that its next-generation processor for the ultraportable and thin-and-light segments, the Core Ultra "Lunar Lake," will feature an over four-fold increase in NPU performance, which will be as fast as 45 TOPS. This is a significant figure, as Microsoft recently announcedthat Copilot will perform several tasks locally (on the device), provided it has an NPU capable of at least 40 TOPS. The current AI Boost NPU found in Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processor is no faster than 10 TOPS, and the current AMD Ryzen 8040 series features a Ryzen AI NPU with 16 TOPS on tap. AMD's upcoming Ryzen "Strix Point" processor is rumored to feature a similar 40 TOPS-class NPU performance as "Lunar Lake."

Intel also confirmed that notebooks powered by Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" processors will hit the shelves by Christmas 2024 (December). These notebooks will feature not just the 45 TOPS NPU, but also debut Intel's Arc Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture as the processor's integrated graphics solution. With Microsoft's serious push for standardizing AI assistants, the new crop of notebooks could also feature Copilot as a fixed-function button on their keyboards, similar to the Win key that brings up the Start menu.

Two of AMD's upcoming mobile processors that implement the "Zen 5" microarchitecture, "Strix Point" and "Fire Range," were spotted in shipping manifests. These are prototypes moving between AMD and its OEM partners. The manifest explicitly mentions a "Fire Range" 16-core processor sample with 55 W TDP, another "Fire Range" chip with an 8-core configuration and the same 55 W power; and a trio of "Strix Point" processors with a 28 W power design. Two of these are Ryzen 9 SKUs, and one of them is a Ryzen 7.

VideoCardz has the OPN codes for the samples being moved. The Ryzen 7 "Strix Point" sample bears 100-0000001335. One of the two Ryzen 9 "Strix Point" chips bears 100-000000994. The 16-core "Fire Range" is marked 100-000001028, while the 8-core "Fire Range" is 100-000001029. "Strix Point" will be AMD's most imporant mobile processor silicon, as this will be the one with a "Zen 5" CPU core count relevant to the notebook market, pack an RDNA 3+ iGPU, and that alleged 40 TOPS+ XDNA 2 NPU that can run Microsoft Copilot locally. A step up from this will be "Strix Halo," with a higher CPU core count, a much larger iGPU designed for performance-segment gaming. "Fire Range" is essentially a low Z-height BGA version of the "Granite Ridge" chiplet processor that has up to two "Zen 5" CCDs and an I/O die.

Microsoft, Intel, and AMD are attempting to jumpstart demand in the PC industry again, under the aegis of the AI PC—devices with native acceleration for AI workloads. Both Intel and AMD have mobile processors with on-silicon NPUs (neural processing units), which are designed to accelerate the first wave of AI-enhanced client experiences on Windows 11 23H2. Microsoft's bulwark with democratizing AI has been Copilot, as a licensee of Open AI GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo, Dali, and other generative AI tools from the Open AI stable. Copilot is currently Microsoft's most heavily invested application, with its most capital and best minds mobilized to making it the most popular AI assistant. Microsoft even pushed for the AI PC designator to PC OEMs, which requires them to have a dedicated Copilot key akin to the Start key (we'll see how anti-competition regulators deal with that).

The problem with Microsoft's tango with Intel and AMD to push AI PCs, is that Copilot doesn't really use an NPU, not even at the edge—you input a query or a prompt, and Copilot hands it over to a cloud-based AI service. This is about to change, with Microsoft announcing that Copilot will be able to run locally on AI PCs. Microsoft identified several kinds of Copilot use-cases that an NPU can handle on-device, which should speed up response times to Copilot queries, but this requires the NPU to have at least 40 TOPS of performance. This is a problem for the current crop of processors with NPUs. Intel's Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" has an AI Boost NPU with 10 TOPS on tap, while the Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" is only slightly faster, with a 16 TOPS Ryzen AI NPU. AMD has already revealed that the XDNA 2-based 2nd Generation Ryzen AI NPU in its upcoming "Strix Point" processors will come with over 40 TOPS of performance, and it stands to reason that the NPUs in Intel's "Arrow Lake" or "Lunar Lake" processors are comparable in performance; which should enable on-device Copilot.

Dr. Lisa Su introduced AMD's "next-gen AMD Ryzen" processor series during a recent presentation at the Beijing AI PC Innovation Summit—this announcement confirms that Team Red's RDNA 3+ (AKA 3.5) graphics technology is destined to arrive (on board) with the launch of "Strix Point" processors. Product roadmaps remain unchanged—when compared to slides from last December—AMD still anticipates a 2024 launch window. China has been introduced to current-gen "Hawk Point" Ryzen 8040 mobile and 8000G (AM5) desktop processors—key AMD personnel presented a variety of products, including region-specific budget options.

David Wang, SVP of GPU Technology and Engineering R&D, covered the RDNA 3+ and XDNA 2 architectures (very briefly) during his on-stage appearance—he dedicated most of his attention to current-gen "Hawk Point" processors. The Strix Point integrated solution—a GFX1150 target—has been linked to "RDNA 3.5" for a while, a lot of this information was gleaned from publicly visible AMD patch notices. The latest Team Red software engineering activities indicate that Zen 5 CPU enablement is nearing a possible finish line.

Close monitoring of AMD engineering activities—around mid-February time—revealed the existence of a new set of patches for GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). At the time, news reports put spotlights on Team Red's "znver5" enablement—this target indicated that staffers were prepping Zen 5 processor microarchitecture with an expanded AVX instruction set (building on top of Zen 4's current capabilities). Phoronix's Michael Larabel has fretted over AMD's relative silence over the past month—regarding a possible merging of support prior to the stable release of GCC 14.

He was relieved to discover renewed activity earlier today: "AMD Zen 5 processor enablement has been merged to GCC Git in time for the GCC 14.1 stable release that will be out in the coming weeks. It was great seeing AMD getting their Zen 5 processor enablement upstreamed ahead of any Ryzen or EPYC product launches and being able to do so in time for the annual major GNU Compiler Collection feature release." Team Red is inching ever closer to the much anticipated 2024 rollout of next-gen Ryzen 9000 processors, please refer to a VideoCardz-authored timeline diagram (below)—"Granite Ridge" is an incoming AM5 desktop CPU family (reportedly utilizing Zen 5 and RDNA 2 tech), while "Strix Point" is scheduled to become a mobile APU series (Zen 5 + RDNA 3.5).

AMD Linux engineers have been working on "GFX1150" and "GFX1151" targets for a while—official references to "Strix 1/Strix Point" and "Strix Point Halo" have appeared several times on official development channels. Phoronix's head honcho—Michael Larabel—monitors these activities with keen interest, his latest finding indicates that Team Red is preparing open-source RadeonSI/RADV driver support for the GFX1151 IP. Their MESA 24.1 update merges in GPU enablement for possible high-end "Strix Point Halo" laptop processors—tech tipsters believe that these chiplet variants could sport up to sixteen Zen 5 CPU cores and forty RDNA 3.5 GPU cores.

AMD's enablement of the "GFX1150/Strix Point" GPU appeared online late last month—these monolithic laptop chips are alleged to sit below "Strix Point Halo" in Team Red's product hierarchy. Insiders suggest that the best configurations could house twelve Zen 5 CPU cores and sixteen RDNA 3.5 GPU cores. Phoronix posited that the "RDNA 3 refresh" graphics solution: "is just rumored for select APUs, while ultimately we'll see where this GFX 11.5.1 IP is found if for some further upgraded APU or something more special. In any event the open-source Linux driver support is coming together." According to official product roadmaps, the initial batch of "Strix Point" mobile chips are expected ship later this year—representing a proper next-gen upgrade over current "Hawk Point" offerings.

AMD's next generation Ryzen mobile processor family is undergoing a significant re-positioning of IP within its product stack, as the company introduces the new "elite experience" segment. The "Fire Range" mobile processor is a direct successor to "Dragon Range" MCM, with two 8-core "Zen 5" chiplets. It is essentially a BGA package of the desktop "Granite Ridge" processor, and comes with up to 16 "Zen 5" cores, for flagship gaming notebooks and mobile workstations. A segment below the current "Dragon Range" is the current "Hawk Point" silicon, driving premium experiences. There is a rather large CPU performance gap between the two, as would be the case between the upcoming "Fire Range" and "Kraken Point," which is why AMD is creating the "elite experience" segment, and filling it with "Strix Halo" and "Strix Point," which will square off against Core Ultra 7 and Core Ultra 9 processors, as well as certain HX-segment 14th Gen Core mobile processors. "Strix Point" has a significant core-count increase to 12, along with a large iGPU. We've extensively covered "Strix Point" in our older article, but now we have more information on the elusive "Kraken Point."

"Kraken Point" is codename for AMD's next-generation monolithic mobile processor silicon being designed to power Ryzen processor SKUs competing against the bulk of Intel Core Ultra 5 and Core Ultra 7 SKUs. This chip will be built on a refined 4 nm EUV node by TSMC, and will be monolithic. Its most interesting aspect is the CPU complex. It reportedly features a combination of four regular "Zen 5" cores, and four "Zen 5c" low power cores. All eight cores will likely share a single CCX, which means they share a common L3 cache, which enables easy movement of threads between the two kinds of cores, without having to make round-trips to the DRAM.

AMD's Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" mobile APUs debuted last year with Ryzen AI capabilities (via onboard Xilinx IP), thanks to the fitting of an on-board NPU—Team Red's first generation XDNA AI Engine received immediate support on Windows platforms. Naturally, Linux users expressed frustration about being left out in the cold—later on in the year, AMD put some feelers out (as reported by Phoronix), and gauged interest in a potential Linux deployment of Ryzen AI. Fast forward to January 2024, we see movement with an initial release on open platforms—according to Michael Larabel's latest article: "More than 1,000 requests for Linux support were logged following that October statement and since then I've been hearing quietly of AMD working on Linux support... Well, there's now an open-source but currently out-of-tree driver available. "

AMD's GitHub has been updated with the "first public code drop of the XDNA Linux driver." According to System Requirements, the entry point "to run AI applications (test machine) on an Ryzen AI processor" is Phoenix silicon, as expected. Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" is presumably on the support list, since it shares the same basic underpinnings—albeit with greater NPU performance. One of AMD's GitHub authors has teased that "Strix" will also be supported in the future—second generation XDNA NPUs are expected to drop later this year. Targets for GFX1150 and GFX1151 were uncovered earlier this week—"Strix Point" and "Strix Point Halo" (respectively) are codenames for next generation Team Red APUs.

References to GFX1150 & GFX1151 targets have been spotted again—this time in a ROCm Github repository—by renowned hardware sleuth; Kepler_L2. These references were first spotted last summer, in an AMDGPU LLVM backend/compiler (reported by Phoronix)—industry experts immediately linked these target codes to next generation "Strix" APU families. The latest leak provides confirmation that the GFX1150 ID is tied to "Strix Point 1," while GFX1151 is an internal IP for "Strix Point Halo," or simply "Strix Halo." The freshly published ROCm Github's commit is titled: "Strix Halo Support and Strix support in staging," which corroborates previous rumors regarding Team Red's engineers being deep into development of Zen 5 (and RDNA 3.5)-based accelerated processing units.

AMD has published several processor product roadmaps with references to "Strix Point" next-gen APUs, with a targeted 2024 launch window. Their December 2023 "Advancing AI Event" confirmed that the "Strix Point" mobile family will sport "XDNA 2" NPUs—previous generation "Phoenix" and recently released "Hawk Point" processors are on the first iteration of XDNA (a spatial dataflow NPU architecture). It is speculated that a typical "Strix Point" laptop processor will pack 12 Zen 5 CPU cores and 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores. Team Red has kept quiet about "Strix Halo" (also known as "Sarlak") when conducting public-facing presentations—a loose 2025 launch window is being touted by the rumor mill. The most advanced examples could feature up to 16 Zen 5 CPU cores and 40 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores.

Today at the "Advancing AI" event, AMD was joined by industry leaders including Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, Dell Technologies, HPE, Lenovo, Supermicro, Arista, Broadcom and Cisco to showcase how these companies are working with AMD to deliver advanced AI solutions spanning from cloud to enterprise and PCs. AMD launched multiple new products at the event, including the AMD Instinct MI300 Series data center AI accelerators, ROCm 6 open software stack with significant optimizations and new features supporting Large Language Models (LLMs) and Ryzen 8040 Series processors with Ryzen AI.

"AI is the future of computing and AMD is uniquely positioned to power the end-to-end infrastructure that will define this AI era, from massive cloud installations to enterprise clusters and AI-enabled intelligent embedded devices and PCs," said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "We are seeing very strong demand for our new Instinct MI300 GPUs, which are the highest-performance accelerators in the world for generative AI. We are also building significant momentum for our data center AI solutions with the largest cloud companies, the industry's top server providers, and the most innovative AI startups ꟷ who we are working closely with to rapidly bring Instinct MI300 solutions to market that will dramatically accelerate the pace of innovation across the entire AI ecosystem."

AMD in its Ryzen 8040 series "Hawk Point" mobile processors announcement made the first mention of XDNA 2, its next-generation on-chip neural processing unit (NPU) architecture. Above all, the XDNA 2 NPU is expected to introduce an over 3 times improvement in performance over the first generation XDNA NPU powering the Ryzen 7040 series "Phoenix" processor. XDNA 2 is making its debut with AMD's next-generation Ryzen "Strix Point" mobile processor that the company looks to launch in 2024. While "Phoenix" offers 10 TOPS of NPU performance, AMD mentions an "over 3 times" performance improvement, which probably puts this figure at 32 TOPS for "Strix Point."

The "Strix Point" mobile processor is rumored to debut faster "Zen 5" CPU cores, a possible CPU core count increase to 12, and a much more powerful iGPU based on the updated RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture, with some SKUs expected to feature CU counts as high as 32, and designed to square off against the iGPU of the Apple M3 Max processor. Besides "Zen 5" CPU cores and RDNA 3.5 iGPU, we now know that even the NPU gets an overhaul with this XDNA 2 announcement, and a possible 32 TOPS NPU performance.

With Windows 11 23H2 setting the stage for increased prevalence of AI in client PC use cases, the new hardware battleground between AMD and its rivals Intel, Apple, and Qualcomm, will be in equipping their mobile processors with sufficient AI acceleration performance. AMD already introduced accelerated AI with the current "Phoenix" processor that debuts Ryzen AI, and its Xilinx XDNA hardware backend that provides a performance of up to 16 TOPS. This will see a 2-3 fold increase with the company's 2024-25 mobile processor lineup, according to a roadmap leak by "Moore's Law is Dead."

At the very top of the pile, in a product segment called "ultimate compute," which consists of large gaming notebooks, mobile workstations, and desktop-replacements; the company's current Ryzen 7045 "Dragon Range" processor will continue throughout 2024. Essentially a non-socketed version of the desktop "Raphael" MCM, "Dragon Range" features up to two 5 nm "Zen 4" CCDs for up to 16 cores, and a 6 nm cIOD. This processor lacks any form of AI acceleration. In 2025, the processor will be succeeded with "Fire Range," a similar non-socketed, mobile-friendly MCM that's derived from "Granite Ridge," with up to two 4 nm "Zen 5" CCDs for up to 16 cores; and the 6 nm cIOD. What's interesting to note here, is that the quasi-roadmap makes no mention of AI acceleration for "Fire Range," which means "Granite Ridge" could miss out on Ryzen AI acceleration from the processor. Modern discrete GPUs from both NVIDIA and AMD support AI accelerators, so this must have been AMD's consideration to exclude an XDNA-based Ryzen AI accelerator on "Fire Range" and "Granite Ridge."

Thanks to the information from Windows Report, we have received numerous details regarding Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon Elite X chip for laptops. The Snapdragon Elite X SoC is built on top of Nuvia-derived Oryon cores, which Qualcomm put 12 off in the SoC. While we don't know their base frequencies, the all-core boost reaches 3.8 GHz. The SoC can reach up to 4.3 GHz on single and dual-core boosting. However, the slide notes that this is all pure "big" core configuration of the SoC, so no big.LITTLE design is done. The GPU part of Snapdragon Elite X is still based on Qualcomm's Adreno IP; however, the performance figures are up significantly to reach 4.6 TeraFLOPS of supposedly FP32 single-precision power. Accompanying the CPU and GPU, there are dedicated AI and image processing accelerators, like Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which can process 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS). For the camera, the Spectra Image Sensor Processor (ISP) is there to support up to 4K HDR video capture on a dual 36 MP or a single 64 MP camera setup.

The SoC supports LPDDR5X memory running at 8533 MT/s and a maximum capacity of 64 GB. Apparently, the memory controller is an 8-channel one with a 16-bit width and a maximum bandwidth of 136 GB/s. Snapdragon Elite X has PCIe 4.0 and supports UFS 4.0 for outside connection. All of this is packed on a die manufactured by TSMC on a 4 nm node. In addition to marketing excellent performance compared to x86 solutions, Qualcomm also advertises the SoC as power efficient. The slide notes that it uses 1/3 of the power at the same peak PC performance of x86 offerings. It is also interesting to note that the package will support WiFi7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Officially coming in 2024, the Snapdragon Elite X will have to compete with Intel's Meteor Lake and/or Arrow Lake, in addition to AMD Strix Point.

In recent developments, Linux's open-source graphics ecosystem is making significant strides to accommodate AMD's upcoming RDNA3.5 architecture, also known as RDNA3+ or GFX11.5. Mesa 23.3, a library in the Linux graphics software stack, is now being updated for RDNA3.5, marking a substantial milestone. This upcoming update is particularly tailored for the impending Ryzen 8000 "Strix Point" APU series, which will incorporate the Navi 3.5 architecture. While AMD has maintained secrecy regarding specific enhancements accompanying this refresh, we expect decent performance improvements. This includes the anticipation that the Ryzen 8000 APUs will feature an increased number of Compute Units (CUs), where the current highest number is 12 CUs, and the increase could bump that figure to 16 CUs. The official announcement of the Ryzen 8000 series is expected in early 2024 when we will learn more about its GPU configuration and performance.