Advanced Micro Devices, an American chip design company, today revealed new processors to power AI-enabled PCs in an effort to take the lead in the market against competitors like Nvidia and Intel.
TakeAway Points:
- AI-powered PCs have been heralded as a new era for the industry by AMD, Nvidia, and Intel.
- AI PCs are personal computers with processors built in to carry out artificial intelligence functions like summarising and translating languages in real time.
- The market for AI PCs will grow, with adoption picking up steam in the second half of 2024, according to AMD president Victor Peng, who spoke with CNBC in February.
AMD Reveals New Chips
Computers with CPUs built specifically for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as summarization and language translation in real time, are known as AI PCs.
AMD claimed the Ryzen Pro 8040 series laptop and desktop CPUs, which are manufactured using cutting-edge 4-nanometer technology, are the most potent chips yet for business PCs.
According to a press statement from AMD on Tuesday, these CPUs are anticipated to power PC models from companies like HP and Lenovo starting in the second quarter of 2024.
The Nvidia and Intel CPUs made especially for AI PCs will be up against these new AMD chips.
AMD does not manufacture its own chips, similar to Nvidia. Instead, it outsources the fabrication of its chips to semiconductor foundries, mainly to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor fabrication Company.
TSMC presently makes 3-nanometer semiconductors and aims to initiate industrial manufacturing of 2-nanometer chips in 2025. Generally speaking, processors with smaller nanoscale sizes are more potent and effective.
Ryzen 8000G Series Desktop Processors
In January, AMD announced the next-generation Ryzen 8000G series desktop processors, which are able to provide “immense power and dominant performance for intensive workloads, including gaming and content creation.” The 8000G series is built on the 4-nanometer process.
AI PCs have been heralded as a new era for the industry by AMD and Intel. AI had a rise last year with ChatGPT’s November 2022 launch. In February, Victor Peng, the president of AMD, stated to CNBC that the market for AI personal computers will keep growing and that adoption will pick up speed in the second half of 2024.
“We think the AI PC will be the star of the show for the upcoming year,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said at a launch event in New York in 2023.
Chips Industry
Major chipmakers are racing to release more efficient and powerful chips for AI applications.
New GPUs from Nvidia were released in the first part of January to run generative AI applications on PCs made by Acer, Dell, and Lenovo, among other firms.
In order to implement AI capabilities on PCs, Intel introduced Core Ultra CPUs in December. The company announced that more than 230 of the first AI PCs in the world, made by Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, will have these CPUs installed.
According to U.S. research firm Gartner, by 2024, shipments of AI PCs would account for 22% of total PC shipments. By year’s end, the research group projects that 54.5 million AI PCs will be shipped.
“The rapid adoption of on-device GenAI capabilities and AI processors will eventually become a standard requirement for technology vendors,” said Ranjit Atwal, senior director analyst at Gartner.
However, this could present challenges to vendors as they would face difficulties “differentiating themselves from competitors” and increasing revenue, said Atwal.