AMD launches Ryzen Pro 4000 Series processors

AMD has announced the launch of its Ryzen Pro 4000 Series Mobile family, to complement the previously launched Ryzen Mobile 4000 series for consumers.

The Ryzen Pro 4000 Series Mobile family promises to be the world's first series of x86 7nm commercial notebook processors with a focus on enabling ultra-thin business notebooks. Initially adopted by HP and Lenovo, the processors are expected to be available worldwide during the first half of this year, providing better performance, improved longevity, and multiple layers of security features.

Three chips form the basis of the new family with the AMD Ryzen 4 Pro 4450U, AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 4650U, and AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U. 

The AMD Ryzen 3 Pro 4450U offers 4 cores and 8 threads with a base clock speed of 2.5GHz and boost clock of 3.7GHz while the Ryzen 5 provides 6 cores, 12 threads, 2.1GHz base clock and boost of up to 4.0GHz. Then there's the Ryzen 7 Pro which provides 8 cores, 16 threads, 1.7GHz base clock and a boost clock of 4.1GHz. 

The Ryzen 3 Pro has 5 GPU cores and 6MB of L2/L3 cache while each processor after that adds an extra GPU core with the Ryzen 5 also offering 11MB of L2/L3 cache and the Ryzen 7 having 12MB.

AMD reckons that the Ryzen 7 Pro is the fastest business processor out there for ultra-thin business notebooks, providing up to 33 percent better multi-threaded performance compared to the competition. Not that, admittedly, it's explained what it's deeming to be the competition. It also supposedly provides up to 37 percent better overall performance in Microsoft Office applications compared to the previous generation.

That's mostly thanks to the 7nm processor and Zen 2 core architecture which aims to deliver up to 2x performance per watt over the previous generation while still providing over 20 hours of battery life where it counts. 

Besides performance improvements, the AMD Ryzen Pro 4000 series of processors will also include new Pro features for protecting data. This includes AMD Memory Guard, an exclusive feature, that enables full encryption when a system is in hibernate mode, AMD Pro security which offers a multi-layered approach to defences, and full support for Microsoft Endpoint Manager. HP and Lenovo plan on adding their own security features too.

Expect to see new business laptops that utilise these chips in the very near future.