AMD Exec: Dell Commercial PC Deal To Cover Broad Customer Base

In an interview with CRN, Rahul Tikoo, the head of AMD’s client business unit, says the chip designer is supplying Ryzen AI chips for 10 commercial PC designs from Dell Technologies and outlines how the company plans to win in this year’s Windows 11 PC refresh.

The head of AMD’s client CPU business said the chip designer is supplying Ryzen AI chips for 10 laptops and desktops from Dell Technologies to cover a broad range of customers as part of a landmark commercial PC deal the two firms announced in January.

“What we’re bringing together to the market [are] 10 different products, all commercial PCs across notebooks and desktops, with a variety of price points and a variety of screen sizes and a variety of form factors,” said Rahul Tikoo, vice president and general manager of AMD’s client business unit, in an interview with CRN last month.

Those products will start to appear in March, according to Tikoo, who returned to AMD last year after spending 12 years in leadership positions at Dell.

“It’s a very broad portfolio covering 75 [percent], 80 percent of the commercial PC marketplace, in a way meeting the customer where they are in their journey,” he said.

Tikoo provided the details after AMD revealed in January that the company won its first deal to supply Ryzen AI Pro chips to commercial PCs made by Dell after the OEM previously held off from expanding its CPU options beyond rival Intel for the segment.

The PC vendor’s new Dell Pro portfolio of notebooks and desktops will come with options for AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 Pro series that debuted for AI PCs last year and expanded with midrange options in January. These chips, like the latest Intel Core Ultra processors, come with a CPU, GPU and neural processing unit (NPU), which is designed to handle sustained AI workloads such as Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC features.

The Dell Pro PCs are among the more than 100 Ryzen Pro-based enterprise platforms OEMs plan to introduce this year, according to AMD. Other supporting vendors include HP Inc. and Lenovo, which have offered AMD-based commercial PCs for years.

Even without Dell’s help in the commercial PC space, AMD managed to grow its x86 CPU market share in the segment by 4.5 points year over year to 24.6 percent against Intel in last year’s fourth quarter, according to data from Mercury Research that was provided by AMD.

Disty Exec: Dell Could Give AMD Boost With Fed Customers

A senior executive at U.S. distribution giant D&H Distributing told CRN that while he thinks AMD’s commercial PC deal with Dell could help the chip designer make further inroads with enterprise and SMB customers, the agreement could allow AMD to make an even greater impact among federal government customers.

“I think that’s an area where they would have an opportunity to gain a lot of market share, and Dell could definitely help them get into the fed space much faster,” said Marty Bauerlein, D&H’s chief consumer and commercial officer who previously led North America VAR channels and commercial distribution at AMD.

Bauerlein said he doesn’t think the sweeping cuts to the U.S. government—enacted by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team and faced with multiple legal challenges—will stymie AMD’s prospects or overall IT spending in the space.

“I don't think fed business will slow down at all. IT is a weapon at the end of the day, and whoever has the best IT wins, so the federal government will continue to spend a disproportionate amount of the budget on IT products,” he said.

Tikoo Calls Windows 11 Refresh ‘Massive’ Opportunity For AMD

Tikoo called the Windows 11 refresh, driven by Microsoft’s end of support for Windows 10 this October, a “massive” opportunity for AMD, for which the company has deployed programs to win deals with channel partners by market and by segment.

“There are about 900 million PCs out there that require a Windows 11 refresh. Of those 900 million PCs, [roughly] half of them cannot be upgraded to a Windows 11. So they need a modern PC to be able to run Windows 11. And so if you look at that stat, that's larger than the entire PC market, right?” he said.

Tikoo said he has received strong indications from customers that they are considering the purchase of AI PCs to replace devices that are not eligible for Windows 11 or were hastily purchased during the COVID-19 pandemic roughly four to five years ago.

“I’ve not heard a single customer that I had talked to directly that are not thinking about an AI PC as they refresh, because again, as they're refreshing, they’re thinking about the next three to five years and they’re future proofing their purchases,” he said.

This puts AMD in an enviable position, according to Tikoo, because its Ryzen AI processors are the “best ones” in the market for AI PC capabilities and multitasking on top of providing the AMD Pro Technologies platform for deploying, securing and managing PCs.

“Our opportunity is we want to win in the refresh. But as customers are deciding what to buy in the refresh, they're deciding to buy AI PCs, and we're leading in AI PCs from a technology standpoint. And so the choice becomes very easy for them,” he said.

Tikoo said one unique aspect of AMD’s commercial PC chip portfolio is that the Ryzen AI 300 Pro series use the same image platform as the company’s Ryzen 200 Pro series, which comes with a slower NPU at lower price points.

This means customers can more easily deploy and manage PC fleets running a mix of Ryzen AI 300 Pro and Ryzen 200 Pro processors, according to Tikoo. It also gives customers greater flexibility in allocating PCs with Ryzen AI 300 Pro chips for employees with higher performance needs and giving everyone else computers with Ryzen 200 Pro chips.

“That's exactly what that enables us to do with Dell,” he said.

Tikoo On Ryzen AI 300 Pro PC ASPs, Tariffs Impact

Given the choice between the Ryzen AI 300 Pro and Ryzen 200 Pro processors, Tikoo said he thinks enterprises will lean into the former because of their leadership capabilities, which, unlike the latter, makes them eligible to run Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs.

With the Ryzen AI 300 Pro series expanding to mid-range Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 options in January after launching with high-end Ryzen 9 models last year, the lineup will support PCs ranging in price from $600 to more than $1,000, according to Tikoo.

“There's a lot of assortment in the broad mainstream space that is available for our customers,” he said.

Asked about how U.S. tariffs could impact demand for AMD processors, Tikoo said he doesn’t expect the company to “have any challenges around that” because of its “diverse supply chain” and the technology needs of its customers.

Tikoo made the remarks on Feb. 21, more than a week after President Donald Trump enacted 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada on Tuesday, which is when he also doubled tariffs on Chinese products to 20 percent.

“In the short term, I’m sure as our customers think through business continuity planning and what they need to do, we’re supporting them through their needs,” he said.