AMD launches Ryzen 8040 series mobile processors featuring Zen 4 architecture and Ryzen AI NPU

AMD has announced its newest generation of mobile processors — the AMD Ryzen 8040 Series. The announcement comes ahead of the CES event, where AMD usually tends to make its major announcements. With the new processors, AMD has doubled down on AI. The processors feature the Ryzen AI NPU on-die on select models. Further, these new processors are based on the Zen 4 architecture. The company also announced that OEMs such as Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Razer will offer laptops powered by these processors in Q1 2024.

AMD Ryzen 8040 Series mobile processors detailed

The AMD Ryzen 8040 series starts with the AMD Ryzen 3 8440U processor that offers 4 cores and 8 threads of performance. This goes all the way to 8 cores and 16 threads of performance with the top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 8945HS processor. As mentioned earlier, these processors will be based on the Zen 4 architecture. They can also leverage RDNA 3 architecture-based Radeon Graphics. Other features include support for LPDDR5 memory.

Aside from this, the AMD Ryzen 8040 processors will also be ready to leverage the Windows 11 ecosystem. The company notes that select systems with AMD Ryzen 8040 series processors can access out-of-the-box AI with Windows Studio Effects Pack that allows for features such as background blur, eye gaze tracking and noise cancellation.

Ryzen AI NPU details

The new Ryzen AI NPU is based on AMD's XDNA architecture and is tipped to offer up to 1.6x greater AI processor performance as compared to previous AMD processors. Further, the company will also be making Ryzen AI Software widely available. This is aimed at allowing developers to easily build and deploy machine learning applications on AMD's AI PCs. That could include advanced gesture recognition, biometric authentication, and other accessibility features. Laptops with Ryzen AI can offload AI tasks to the NPU, which frees up the CPU. This helps reduce power consumption while increasing battery life. Do note that the AMD Ryzen 3 8440U and Ryzen 5 8540U do not feature the NPU.