AMD has always been ahead of Intel in terms of raw computing power — especially for gaming — and with its new Ryzen 7000 series mobile platform, the company has added an extra dimension that could very well change the PC landscape in the years to come — artificial intelligence (AI).
Personally speaking, in the days when I used to build my own gaming PCs — before it become cost-prohibitive, forcing me to switch consoles — AMD was always my processor and graphics card of choice. In fact, my PlayStation 5 too runs on AMD's power — it has a 7 nm AMD Zen 2 CPU with eight cores capped at 3.5 GHz and an graphics processor based on AMD's RDNA 2 graphics architecture. So colour me a lifelong AMD user.
In an interview with CNBC-TV18.com, Vinay Sinha, Managing Director-Sales, AMD India, said the Ryzen 7000 series' flagship chipset 7040 offers bleeding-edge technology that can be optimised for any power needs, budget, and use case. "The AI engine in particular will unlock a whole host of new capabilities for users. (It’s) a testimony to AMD's commitment to innovation and providing cutting-edge features to its customers," Sinha said.
The Ryzen 7000 series, says Sinha, is built on on Zen4 architecture, a 4 nanometre (nm) node, boasts of RDNA3 graphics, and what AMD claims is "the world’s first AI engine for x86 CPUs." x86 CPUs are your traditional computer chipsets that have been used in PCs forever now.
"It can be leveraged to improve system responsiveness and power efficiency, enable new workloads that weren’t possible on a laptop, accelerate AI-powered features in image and video editing apps, clean up audio and backgrounds in meetings with a minimal hit to battery life, and more," Sinha added.
The retail picture
One of AMD's biggest, and oldest OEM (original equipment manufacturers) is global technology giant Acer, and it was no small coincidence that Acer was also my first ever laptop brand of choice. I used it the longest — just over three years — and, unlike the laptops from other brands that came after it, gave me little no to trouble for my use case.
Acer is optimistic that India represents a potentially massive market because of relatively low PC penetration and that, with their partnership with AMD, they can make significant inroads.
"India is an under-penetrated market when it comes to PCs unlike mobile phones. I believe with digitisation and acceptance to work remotely and study online, more households will buy laptops," Harish Kohli, President and Managing Director, Acer, told CNBC-TV18.com, adding, "In the metro households I see laptops becoming more personal and not a shared device which means more laptops per household."
Further, he said, AMD-powered laptops from Acer will "help deliver powerhouse performance helping make multitasking easier, gaming more immersive, provide increased battery life, and enable better productivity."
To that end, Acer has already planned/released laptops using AMD's latest tech.
"We aim to bring innovative and technologically advanced products to our customers and latest processors from AMD will help in delivering that. We are already the first to market with (the) Ryzen 7000 series processor on our Aspire laptop series," Kohli said.
Acer, among its offerings, boasts of the Swift Go — aimed at portability and productivity — that has an AMD Ryzen 5 7530U hexa-core processor, 16 GB of onboard LPDDR4X system memory, a 14-inch screen and 512 GB of storage starting from Rs 62999; the Aspire 3, which is powered by the AMD Ryzen 5 7520U quad-core processor, Radeon graphics, 8 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage, a 15.6-inch screen, and starts from Rs 47,990; and the gaming-focused Nitro 5, which boasts of the Ryzen 7 7735HS Octa-Core Processor or AMD Ryzen™ 5 7535HS Hexa-Core Processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 GPU with 4 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, 512 GB of storage and RAM upgradable up to 31 GB, a 15.6inch IPS display with 144 Hz refresh rate, starting at Rs 79,990.
"The Swift Go is designed specifically for the Gen Z, students, creators, freelancers, and others who enjoy the thin and light laptop without much compromise," Kohli said.
Artificial intelligence
More interesting to me, however, were the potential applications of AMD's AI engine. Sinha said the AI engine will accommodate the rising demand for contemporary, intelligent software applications and processes.
"AI is becoming ubiquitous in our daily lives, but to run an AI workload on a traditional CPU or GPU architecture is not ideal," Sinha said.
"At the same time, AI is one of the world’s fastest-growing technologies and is transforming both consumer and commercial segments at a rapid pace. We believe that it won’t be long before users start factoring AI functionality into their purchase decisions ... Ryzen AI is different because it’s the only AI engine that has been successfully integrated in an x86 processor rather than using a discrete component. AMD-powered laptops will simultaneously offer better performance and battery life, while also being nearly silent in operation," he added.
"AMD has integrated AI capabilities directly into the PC processor. The most recent intelligent PCs offer dedicated performance for the deep neural networks that serve as the cornerstone of AI applications, whether it be through the development of new tools or the enhancement of already existing ones," he pointed out.
"We will inevitably reach a tipping point where the benefits of these next-gen collaboration, content creation, and productivity tools will be too prominent to ignore. At that point, upgrading to supported hardware is inevitable," he added.
Focus on gaming
According to Sinha, the Ryzen 7045 family of processors is geared towards gamers/creators and offers more cores and higher clock speeds while remaining power-efficient, thanks to a 5 nm node.
"The 7000 series mobile platform allows OEMs to offer a new generation of thinner, lighter, more power-efficient and performant laptop designs without compromising on any front, all while enabling new and advanced experiences," he said.
The AMD Ryzen 7045 series boasts of:
Kohli says Acer too is doubling down on the gaming market.
"The PC gaming and e-sports is another huge area of focus for us as gaming is becoming a mainstream profession — the number of e-sports players doubled from 300,000 in 2020 to 600,000 in 2021. Consumers are also buying gaming laptops as multi-purpose device capable of video editing, gaming, coding and other intensive tasks," Kohli said.
Overall, Kohli said, Acer is very optimistic about 2023. "...we have a significant portfolio of products on AMD across the segments catering to a wide set of consumers — 2023 will be a big year for Acer and AMD will be one of our critical partners to achieve our goals."
AMD has a wide footprints across the personal computing space, and they have big plans to leverage that to boost their market share.
"The flexibility of the Ryzen 7000 series mobile platform allows us to offer OEMs the freedom to create and service a variety of new product categories across all price ranges. India is a price-conscious market, after all, and I think our OEMs will appreciate the flexibility to meet customers at price points they’re comfortable with," Sinha said, adding, "We are engaging in joint marketing and promotional activities to raise awareness amongst consumers, and offering training and education programmes to partners to assist with sales efforts."
