AMD today launched its most recent generation of business processors for business PCs, the Ryzen Pro 8000 series, for both desktop and laptops. For now, AMD will be the only CPU vendor offering AI-powered NPUs in business desktop PCs. AMD's launch arrives on the heels of Intel's 14th-gen vPro platform, which also offers desktop and mobile parts. The difference is that Intel launched its vPro refresh based upon the "Raptor Lake Refresh" architecture, which lacks AI; AMD's Ryzen Pro 8000 series is relatively consistent across both its mobile and desktop offerings. However, not every new Ryzen Pro 8000 mobile or desktop chip includes AI support.

AMD is stepping on the gas with its new Ryzen Pro 7040 processors for both business laptops and desktops, injecting Zen 4 CPU technology and RDNA 3 graphics architecture for increased performance. AI, too, will play a role, with some improvements for video calls to clients and partners. The fine print, though, reveals a small penalty: While last year's Ryzen Pro 6000 models were designed for both 35W to 45W laptops as well as thinner 15W to 30W and 10W to 25W thin-and-light laptops, AMD's latest chips require more power. The high-end 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 9 Pro 7940HS consumes 35W to 54W of power, and there's only a single second tier of chips for laptops that consume between 15W and 28W. Still, AMD claims that its new Ryzen Pro 7040 processors can actually outperform an Apple Mac not on performance, but on battery life.

We really liked the original Acer Swift Edge 16, and Acer's update to it is surprisingly intriguing: It's even thinner, though heavier, with a step down in both the display quality and price. In our original review of the Acer Swift Edge 16 we noted that "we've not seen a laptop with a larger screen that weighs less." But reviewer Matt Elliott went on to note that he wouldn't mind seeing Acer invest in a bit more material to stabilize the laptop. Acer apparently rejected that advice, went the other direction, and this $1,299 Ryzen 7000-based laptop is the result. As a consequence, the Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-43-R98R) will be a tad thinner at 0.51 inches thick, but will weigh 2.73 pounds, a 0.14-pound increase over the previous generation.

A top AMD executive says that the company is thinking about deeper integration of AI across the Ryzen product line, but one ingredient is missing: client applications and operating systems that actually take advantage of them. AMD launched the Ryzen 7000 series in January, which includes the Ryzen 7040HS. In early May, AMD announced the Ryzen 7040U, a lower-power version of the 7040HS. Both are the first chips to include Ryzen AI "XDNA" hardware, among the first occurrences of AI logic for PCs. So far, however, AI remains a service that (aside from Stable Diffusion and some others) exclusively runs in the cloud.

AMD announced four new processors within its Ryzen Mobile 7040 series, taking more steps toward what AMD believes will eventually be a future full of artificial intelligence-enhanced PCs powered by its XDNA AI architecture. Two of these new chips include Ryzen AI, hardware AI logic supported by new instructions. That said, you'll want to buy laptops based upon new chips for what they can deliver now, more than for their potential for AI in the future. And AMD's latest laptop processors look to pack plenty of punch. These new 7040U processors wield not only AMD's latest Zen 4 compute cores, but also powerful integrated Radeon graphics based on the same RDNA 3 architecture found in the latest and greatest Radeon graphics cards.

The rise of consumer-focused artificial intelligence applications (like AI art and ChatGPT) was the most dynamic trend of 2022. But don't get too excited quite yet -- buying new laptops from AMD and Intel with AI functions built in aren't worth you opening your wallet. Given the breakneck pace of AI development, though, they may very well be come next year's CES. Deep within the confusing mishmash of processor architectures that make up AMD's latest mobile Ryzen chips lies XDNA, the new AI hardware architecture that AMD is launching within the Ryzen Mobile 7040 Series as "Ryzen AI." (Think of XDNA as the AI version of RDNA, the foundation of AMD's Radeon graphics cores.) Intel has similar plans, though right now it's using a discrete Movidius AI card as a placeholder until its Meteor Lake chips integrate a "real" AI core. Qualcomm has offered AI technology as part of its Arm-based Snapdragon chips for years, which power most smartphones but are a niche player in Windows PCs.

AMD is bringing out some big guns to take on Intel's powerful HX laptop CPUs, and once again, they're also called "HX." The company's new Ryzen 9 7945HX processor is its most premium mobile offering, with 16 cores and 32 threads, as well as speeds between 2.5GHz and 5.4GHz. It's joined by an array of other Ryzen 7000 CPUs unveiled at CES (AMD also announced low-end chipsin September), which will power everything from budget laptops to extreme gaming and creator machines. There will be a Ryzen laptop chip for practically every need. It makes sense for AMD to focus even more on its HX chips this year.