AMD: Ryzen AI Pro 300 Series Is The ‘Best AI PC Platform’ For Businesses

The chip designer says the Ryzen AI Pro 300 processors for AI-accelerated laptops combine leadership performance and efficiency with new enterprise-level security features such as Cloud Bare Metal Recovery as well as remote management and deployment capabilities.

AMD is calling its newly launched Ryzen AI Pro 300 processors the “best AI PC platform” for businesses, saying they will bring new levels of security and manageability to Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs that are set to hit the market through next year.

Unveiled at its Advancing AI Event in San Francisco Thursday, the Ryzen AI Pro 300 processors combine leadership performance and efficiency with new enterprise-level security features such as Cloud Bare Metal Recovery as well as remote management and deployment capabilities, according to the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip designer.

PC vendors are expected to use Ryzen AI Pro processors in more than 100 computer designs for businesses through 2025, according to AMD.

The Ryzen AI Pro 300 series is part of AMD’s third generation of processors for AI-accelerated laptops, and the chips will feature a Zen 5 CPU with up to 12 cores and a 5.1GHz maximum boost frequency, an RDNA 3.5 GPU with up to 16 compute units and an XDNA 2 neural processing unit (NPU) with 50 to 55 trillion operations per second (TOPS).

John Anguiano, an AMD product marketer, said these specifications represent a “tremendous generational uplift” over its previous-generation Ryzen 8040 series that debuted at the beginning of the year and fell short of the 40 NPU TOPS requirement set by Microsoft for Copilot+ PCs, which debuted with Qualcomm chips in June.

Microsoft plans to make Copilot+ PC features available on supported AMD platforms in November for members of the Windows Insider Program.

“Holistically, this makes the Ryzen AI Pro 300 series the best at enabling next-gen AI experiences for enterprise,” he said.

The new processors also enable multiday battery life in laptops, according to Anguiano.

“This just means that we’re ready for a Windows 11 environment, and certainly ready for Copilot+ in a much stronger, more performant and battery-ready way,” he said.

The Ryzen AI Pro 300 series will initially consist of three models, ranging from the eight-core, 5GHz Ryzen AI 7 Pro 300 to the 12-core, 5.1GHz Ryzen AI 9 HX Pro 375.

With an NPU providing 50 to 55 TOPS, the Ryzen AI Pro 300 series provides faster NPU performance than the 48 TOPS of Intel’s recently launched Core Ultra 200V processors and the roughly 11 TOPs of the first-generation Core Ultra chips that debuted last year. It’s also faster than the 45 TOPS of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips for Copilot+ PCs.

Compared with the latest Intel AI PC chips with vPro capabilities, AMD said the Ryzen AI 7 Pro 360 is up to 30 percent faster than the Core Ultra 7 165U while the Ryzen AI 9 HX Pro 375 is up to 40 percent faster than the Core Ultra 7 165H on the Cinebench R24 n-thread test.

With the Procyon Office Productivity benchmarks that test Microsoft Office application performance, AMD said the Ryzen AI 7 Pro 360 is 9 percent faster than the Core Ultra 7 165U while the Ryzen AI 9 HX Pro 375 is 14 percent faster than the Core Ultra 7 165H.

Intel isn’t expected to release the vPro version of its Core Ultra 200V chips until early next year, the rival has previously said.

Like previous Ryzen Pro processors, the Ryzen AI Pro 300 series features AMD’s Pro Technologies for security, manageability and reliability.

What’s new with AMD’s Pro Technologies for the Ryzen AI Pro 300 series is on the security side, where there are four new features: a second-generation AMD Secure Processor, Cloud Bare Metal Recovery, Supply Security and Watch Dog Timer.

Cloud Bare Metal Recovery allows IT administrators to communicate with the PC pre-operating system through the cloud to recover the system without needing to ship the device. Supply Chain Security provides authentication for AMD’s system-on-chips in customer platforms and enables “traceability” across the supply chain.

Watch Dog Timer, on the other hand, “augments resiliency support through detection and recovery of hung [system-on-chip] processes,” according to AMD.