#AMD #Zen #copies #Intel #marketing #tearing #hair #didnt
Intel last summer announced an imaginary transition to a new era of processors, symbolized by the change in branding to Core Ultra on Meteor Lake processors and the upcoming Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake. Rival AMD has often copied Intel’s branding methods in the past, and it looks like it will do it again, and very literally. The upcoming processors with the Zen 5 architecture will get their own version of the Core Ultra name, while it is possible that this time, paradoxically, Intel will be envious.
A little like in the previous update it’s a story where one report comes out saying Á, immediately contradicted by another report saying Boo. As for how AMD will name the processors with the Zen 5 architecture, an official not-quite-leak from Lenovo first appeared, which mentioned the use of future Ryzen 8050 processors in the materials for its laptops. This would fit with the current marking, where 8000 means product year 2024 and 50 at the end of using the Zen 5 architecture.
However, it seems that while Lenovo may not be lying, the marketing material merely assumed that AMD would use this marking. We probably didn’t think so and assumed that there would be a certain deviation and the processors would already be called Ryzen 9050, even if they were released this year.
Ryzen AI 100 generation
Shortly afterwards, the indiscretion of Asus also happened, which leaked several notebooks that will be based on the mobile Zen 5, i.e. APU Strix Point. Of particular interest is the Vivobook S16, which will have a 12-core Strix Point processor, and Asus has already posted some specifications on its website, including the CPU designation, which the company apparently already learned under NDA (the specifications have since been quickly deleted again). . That name should be Ryzen AI 9 HX 170it is possible that it will be the most powerful (or maybe even the second most powerful) model of the series.
Apparently, AMD will not use either the 8050 or the 9050 designation, but like Intel – or perhaps mainly in response to it – will change the name of the processors to indicate that the processors in question are a certain watershed and a new technology against the previous ones. Another motivation is probably the fact that today’s markings are running out of numbers and after the 9000 generation, five-digit markings would probably have to be used.
While Intel has a Core Ultra instead of the earlier Core “i”, AMD will obviously put “Ryzen AI” against it. It’s not completely mindless because of the Ryzen AI brand the company has already introduced mobile Ryzen 7000 a 8000 to name their NPU, and even now this designation is in the logo on the stickers that notebooks with these processors carry.
Existing Ryzen AI logo indicating NPU technology
Autor: AMD
With this name change, the marking is also reset to three digits (probably to make it clear that this is not the old Ryzen 1000 processor from 2017), so we have the Ryzen AI 100 generation. indicate to which performance and consumption class the processor belongs. Here, AMD got a bit creative and moved the letters before the number, whereas before it was the other way around (and Intel keeps it that way). It doesn’t look very happy, because the markings have more broken up into several parts.
However, Ryzen AI as an alternative or counterbalance to Intel’s Core Ultra seems like a pretty good move. AI (artificial intelligence) is the biggest fad (fad?) in today’s computer industry and the entire market is trying to cash in on it, so it makes sense to put it in the name. Especially given that the AI acceleration in the NPU units is one of the main new capabilities on these processors that the renaming is supposed to signal.
The idea creeps in that in the department of Intel that comes up with various brands and promotional strategies, someone now regrets that he did not get (or use, if he did) the same idea himself, and Meteor Lake processors were not named Core AI (and so on). It could even be organically combined with the original “i” in the model designations, so you would have a Core AI9 15900K (or ai9 15900K). It would probably seem quite non-violent and natural, so that the impression that the whole rebranding is mainly because Intel is trying to attract attention as much as possible, because it does not manage to dazzle enough on a technological level, would not creep in so much.
Ryzen AI 9 HX 170
By the way, the specs that Asus lists for this processor are these: The Strix Point is confirmed to have 12 cores with 24 threads (SMT), but the breakdown is not given between the large Zen 5 cores and the compact, lower-clocked Zen 5c. The processor has a 24 MB L3 cache, i.e. a somewhat irregular capacity, for which we do not yet know whether it is divided into two segments (16 MB and 8 MB?).
Asus also states that the total performance in AI is 77 TOPS, but only about 45 TOPS of that is probably NPU performance. It is also said that the maximum boost is 5.1GHz, but according to some voices this is not the definitive specification (hard to say if this is true).
AMD Ryzen mobile processor
Autor: AMD
Will Ryzen AI also be in the desktop?
This is all about the Strix Point notebook processors for now. Eventually, the Ryzen AI designation can probably be extended to their desktop versions for socket AM5, but it would be logical if only those models with an NPU unit carried it.
The first desktop processors with the Zen 5 architecture to hit the market will be something else – the so-called Granite Ridge family, consisting of CPU chiplets with Zen 5 cores (shared with server CPUs) and an IO chiplet taken from the current Ryzen 7000X. These Granite Ridge processors don’t have an NPU or any new connectivity or iGPU. We think they will use the Ryzen 9050 marking. Or maybe just plain Ryzen 9000, so the models will then be called Ryzen 5 9600X, Ryzen 7 9700X, Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X (or X3D) like today.
Sources: VideoCardz (1, 2), TechnicallyLogic, Harukaze5719
