If we turn the clock back to 10 years ago, during the low tide of AMD, AMD completed one of the most important personnel changes in its history, Dr. Lisa Su, a Chinese woman who today seems to be a legend, took over as AMD's CEO. The events since then are familiar to everyone, belonging to a legendary history of the semiconductor chip industry, which was written on the monument of history by this charming and charming Chinese woman.
During AMD's "Advancing AI 2024" conference, Dr. Lisa Su spoke in a keynote speech and on social media about her incredible 10-year journey at AMD. The applause at the conference was like thunder, and each participant passed their heartfelt admiration to the radiant "Su Ma" on the stage through applause. At this time, looking back at AMD's counterattack history in the past ten years, it is even more unique.
In the past decade, AMD, which has gradually regained its position in the consumer market with its Zen architecture and Ryzen processors, has also caught up with emerging industries such as big data and AI. Launched in 2017, the EPYC series of processors helped AMD gain a 34% market share in the server segment over a seven-year period, a height never reached by AMD before. The Instinct MI300X compute card for AI is also expected to generate more than $4.5 billion in revenue for AMD. In addition, the Ryzen PRO series processors launched for the commercial AIPC market, especially the Ryzen PRO 8040 series and the latest Ryzen AI PRO 300 series, which have been released this year or will soon become the core driving force for the development of the commercial AIPC market.
There is no doubt that the current trend of the commercial market is tilting towards AI. Whether it is productivity application innovation, or the demands of security and management that are important to enterprise users, or those enterprises directly related to AI large model training and reasoning, AI is not only a gathering place for hot money in the capital market, but also the direction of the current and future development of the technology industry. The AMD Ryzen AI PRO 300 series processors are born from this background to help enterprise users build commercial AI PC core hardware that is highly productive, highly secure, easy to deploy and manage.
During the Advancing AI 2024 conference, we had the opportunity to meet with executives of AMD Ryzen AI PRO 300 series processors, and some of the questions that had previously existed in our minds were answered.
· The coexistence of new and old platforms provides a more comprehensive product stack for enterprise users
In fact, in April this year, AMD released the Ryzen PRO 8040 series of commercial mobile processors, and just six months later, AMD quickly launched the new Ryzen AI PRO 300 series of commercial mobile processors, such a short cycle of commercial product line iteration is rare in the entire industry. After all, the demand and replacement cycle of the commercial market is generally slower than that of the consumer market. With such a fast-paced product iteration, what is AMD's consideration?
In fact, the current commercial market is changing at a rapid pace that is far from comparable to the past, especially the transformation of business models driven by AI technology, which has intensified the changes in the commercial market.
"It's easy to answer this question because AMD is moving forward with industry speed," said an AMD executive. At the same time, although the Ryzen PRO 8040 series and the Ryzen AI PRO 300 series are both commercial mobile processors, the two solutions can coexist well and can meet the performance needs of enterprise users at different levels. ”
Indeed, Ryzen PRO 8040 series processors, as the previous generation of products, although the NPU computing power will be lower, it can still support quite a lot of applications, and has excellent battery life, lower product prices bring higher cost performance, for enterprise users who focus on controlling IT deployment costs is a good choice at present.
The newly released Ryzen AI PRO 300 series processors, thanks to the innovative Zen5 architecture, the number of cores/threads, frequency, cache capacity and other core parameters are comprehensively upgraded, with stronger CPU, GPU, NPU architecture performance and higher energy efficiency ratio, which is naturally a better choice for future IT deployment for enterprise users who pursue efficient productivity and strong AI computing power.
AMD has always been committed to providing a comprehensive product stack for enterprise users in the commercial market, and the Ryzen PRO 8040 and Ryzen AI PRO 300 are the embodiment of this principle.
· Security remains the highest priority for enterprise users
If you further explore AMD PRO technology, you will find that in recent years, AMD PRO technology set has been updated with relevant security features and functions, such as the newly released Ryzen AI PRO 300 series, which introduces three security features, including cBMR, supply chain security (AMD device identification), and "Watch Dog Timer". Professional ISV partners in the AI field like DynamoAI work together to provide end-to-end AI security technical support for enterprise users.
But when it comes to manageability, technology iteration doesn't seem to be as fast.
AMD executives responded, "Security is exactly what you said, and for enterprise customers, security is still the highest priority. Customers expect AMD to keep moving forward in terms of security, and the current technology and capabilities in terms of manageability are OK for most enterprises. ”
· difference in NPU computing power of 5TOPS reflects the principle of "customer-centric".
When I got the spec sheet of the Ryzen AI PRO 300 series processors, a question arose: the difference in NPU computing power between the three first models was only 5TOPS, and the top-of-the-line Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375 had an NPU computing power of 55TOPS, while the NPU computing power of Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 370 and Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 was 50TOPS. With only 5TOPS computing power, why doesn't AMD unify the computing power of all NPU models to 55TOPS?
AMD executives believe that in the process of developing new technologies, AMD has always focused on customer needs, so they will consider some relatively compromised solutions in product design. And this compromise solution is actually to make the best solution to adapt to the different needs of customers. For example, different OEM customers have independent design goals when designing their own products, and what AMD needs to do is to be able to meet the different needs of these customers with differentiated product offerings, which is the "customer-centric" principle that AMD adheres to.
· Conclusion
In fact, from this rare interview opportunity, we can taste some details of AMD's counterattack in the past ten years.
First of all, at the hardware level, AMD continues to consolidate its core competitiveness. The rapid iteration of the two generations of commercial mobile processor products in a short period of time quickly adapts to the rapidly evolving new needs of the AI-driven commercial market, and at the same time can take into account the differentiated performance needs of users at different levels from top to bottom, which is quite important in the current market environment.
Second, in terms of hardware technology and software functions, AMD actively embraces AI, and uses new technologies to strengthen the security features that have always been the most concerned in the commercial field, laying the foundation for the expansion of its hardware in the commercial market.
In some details, AMD is able to pay attention to the micro needs of the commercial market, which may be more cumbersome, complex, or even inconspicuous, but for those customers who have corresponding needs, it is particularly important, and this control of detailed needs is also the key factor for AMD to continue to acquire customers and gain market share in the commercial market.
Ten years is neither too long nor too short for the PC industry. In the past ten years, how many brands have been in high spirits? How many brands are "unpaid"? How many brands are ambitious? How many brands have left the market? In the arena full of strong players, AMD completed a legendary counterattack, and only AMD itself knows the hardships. But if you stick to it, it's amazing.
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