AMD Ryzen 7040HS Mobile Processors Emphasize Artificial Intelligence

During its keynote in January 2023 at CES in Las Vegas, AMD presented its entire range of processors for the year. Since then, the Ryzen 7045HX series has been released and we had the opportunity to evaluate it during our test of the Asus ROG Scar 17. But AMD still had to formalize the 7040HS series for compact and powerful laptops. It’s done.

RDNA 3.4 nm, dedicated AI unit for 35 W

Three processors make up the HS series: the Ryzen 5 7640HS, Ryzen 7 7840HS and Ryzen 9 7940HS. They are composed of 6 to 8 Zen 4 cores engraved in 4 nm and capable of reaching 5.2 GHz. They are completed with an RDNA 3 graphics part with up to 12 calculation units for the Ryzen 9. The thermal envelope varies from 35 to 54 W depending on the configuration chosen by the laptop manufacturers.

This information had already been communicated to us by AMD, the manufacturer today delivers more information on performance and the XDNA engine dedicated to artificial intelligence.

On the application performance side, AMD announces that the Ryzen 9 7940HS is up to 41% more efficient than Intel’s Core i9-13900H, and up to 11% more efficient than an Apple Silicon M2.

In game and with equal graphics cards, a laptop PC equipped with the Ryzen 9 7940HS would thus be up to 13% more efficient than a model equipped with the Core i9-13900H. We’ll be sure to verify AMD’s claims in a test very soon. The Ryzen 7940HS are also equipped with the Radeon 780M graphics part made up of 12 RDNA3 cores, very similar to that integrated in the Ryzen Z1 Extreme of the ROG Ally. AMD is aware that the vast majority of Ryzen 7040HS will be accompanied in laptops by a dedicated graphics card, but points to possible battery use using only the Radeon 780M.

AMD announces up to 9 hours of video playback autonomy with a 68.1 Wh battery. Remember, however, that Apple reaches 18 hours of self-sufficiency with the 66.5 Wh battery of the MacBook Air 15.

AI, AI and AI

However, AMD has given in to the latest trend by particularly highlighting the AI ​​capabilities of its Ryzen 7040HS. It would be the first x86 processor with a dedicated engine, called XDNA Engine. This engine is compatible with different neural networks (CNN, RNN, LSTM) on the learning platforms ONNX, Tensor Flow and PyTorch at the end of the year. On the performance side, the XDNA Engine of the Ryzen 9 7940HS is capable of reaching up to 10 TOPS. For comparison, the Apple Silicon M2’s Neural Engine can peak at 16 TOPS.

AMD justifies the presence of the XDNA Engine in its Ryzen 7040HS in order to enjoy it locally without depending on cloud tools and an internet connection. Obviously, the question of the cost of its online tools and the security of the data provided is also highlighted by AMD, which therefore offers a “free” alternative.

For the moment, the only concrete application for the general public are options related to the webcam under Windows 11 with Windows Studio Effects. These make it possible to perform a tighter framing on the webcam or even to blur the background, these operations being only possible natively under Windows with the presence of an engine dedicated to AI.

There is now no doubt that Windows 12 will integrate even more functions using an NPU (Neural Processing Unit), such as AMD’s XDNA Engine.

AMD Ryzen 7040HS series processors have been available for a few months in laptops starting at €1600. We will offer you a review of the Ryzen 9 7940HS in the coming weeks.