AMD announces new Ryzen mobile chips

AMD's announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019 (CES 2019) show that the company is serious about targeting the mobile market: The company has officially launched second-generation Ryzen Mobile accelerated processing unit (APU) processors with design wins from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Huawei, Lenovo, and Samsung, as well as a partnership on the first Ryzen-powered Chromebook.

Ahead of a keynote presentation by president and chief executive Dr. Lisa Su, scheduled for later this week and during which she has pledged to update the company's public hardware roadmap, AMD has shown off new Ryzen mobile processors - including, interestingly, one which bears the Athlon brand. This range begins with the aforementioned AMD Athlon 300U, a tweaked Zen+ part featuring two cores and four threads (2C4T) running at 2.4GHz base and 3.3GHz boost frequencies, Vega-based integrated graphics processor (IGP) with three cores running at a peak 1,000MHz, and 5MB of combined L2 and L3 cache memory - making it, effectively, a cut-down Ryzen 3 3200U, which ups the clock speeds to 2.6GHz base, 3.5GHz boost, and 1,200MHz peak graphics respectively. Both parts, meanwhile, have a 15W thermal design profile (TDP).

At the top of the range is the AMD Ryzen 7 3750H, a four-core eight-thread (4C8T) part running at a base 2.3GHz and boost 4GHz frequency and with 10 Vega graphics cores running at 1,400MHz peak. Packing 6MB of combined cache memory, the part has a 35W thermal design profile - which can be dropped by instead opting for the Ryzen 7 3700U, near-identical bar a 15W TDP. Elsewhere in the range is the AMD Ryzen 3 3300 4C4T, Ryzen 5 3500U 4C8T, and Ryzen 5 3550H 4C8T.

'Users expect mobile PCs that excel at both everyday tasks and compute-heavy experiences, and with our latest mobile processor portfolio AMD offers exactly that across all levels of the market,' claimed Saeid Moshkelani, senior vice president and general manager for client compute at AMD, during the announcement. 'Notebook users want to experience the latest modern features while streaming, gaming, or finishing work faster. Enabling breakthrough entertainment experiences, AMD is pleased to enable a wide range of AMD powered notebooks than ever that deliver on those expectations with blazing fast performance, rich graphics, and long battery life.'

At the same time as announcing design wins that will see the first laptops to feature the new chips appearing in the first quarter of the year from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Huawei, Lenovo, and Samsung, AMD unveiled two new parts designed specifically for Chromebook use: The AMD A4-9120C 2C2T running at 1.6GHz base and 2.4GHz boost with three Radeon R4 GPU cores running at a peak 600MHz and a 1MB L2 cache, and the A6-9220C 2C2T at 1.8GHz base and 2.7GHz boost with three Radeon R5 graphics cores at a peak 720MHz and the same 1MB cache. Both parts have a 6W thermal design profile (TDP), and are targeting Intel's Pentium N4200 and Celeron N3350.

More product announcements are expected from AMD as CES 2019 continues this week.