AMD CEO and Chair Lisa Su unveiled the company’s Ryzen 7040 series processor during her keynote address at CES 2023 that she claimed was 30 per cent faster than Apple and 45 per cent faster than Intel.

The Ryzen 7040 processor comes with a built-in AI engine that is based on a configurable accelerator that was adapted from AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx.

The accelerator can be configured across various applications and will be deployed broadly across AMD’s product portfolio.

The dedicated on-chip engine, which is called Ryzen AI, is capable of up to 12 trillion AI operations per second.

“This chip uses four nanometre process technology and it has more than 25 billion transistors, almost twice as many as our Ryzen 6000 generation,” she stated. “The Ryzen 7040 series will enable more than 30 hours of battery life.”

The first Ryzen 7040 notebooks will be available in March with more than 250 gaming and commercial notebook designs slated to launch this year.

Mega trend
Su stated AI was the most important mega trend of the future because it “leverages the power of high-performance computing to analyse and interpret massive amounts of data in order to uncover patterns and make predictions on future outcomes”.

“We need multiple compute engines, and that means CPUs, GPUs, and adaptive accelerators, and we are one of the only companies in the world that have all of these engines,” she noted.

Microsoft partner
Microsoft EVP and chief product officer Panos Panay joined Su on stage to highlight the partnership between the two companies that includes compute power for Microsoft Azure’s cloud services and AMD-powered Xbox gaming processors.

“AMD has been at the forefront of compute for a very long time and continues to be,” he stated. “Now AMD is also at the forefront of AI technology with Ryzen. We can now run massive models that required large GPUs more efficiently on AMD-powered devices.”

The AI-based Ryzen 7040 processors will be paired with Windows 11 operating systems or with Windows Studios.

Panay said AI would help reduce background blurring while improving automatic framing and noise suppression during video conferences to enable a more human connection.

“You sacrifice no battery life,” he said. “You sacrifice essentially no performance. And what does it translate to? It means I can connect with human beings without anything getting in my way and doing whatever else I want to do on the PC at the same time.”