AMD's next-gen Strix Point "Ryzen 8050" APUs will feature a major improvement to their AI capabilities with the XDNA 2 engine coming in 2024.
AMD Ryzen AI & XDNA 2 NPU To Propel AI Capabilities of Next-Gen Strix Point "Ryzen 8050" APUs In 2024
While AMD is refreshing its APU lineup with the Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" family, the company will also be introducing its true next-gen APU lineup under the Ryzen 8050 series in 2024. During the Advancing AI event, AMD confirmed that the lineup will host some major improvements across the board.
Besides offering the latest Zen 5 CPU and RDNA 3.5 GPU core architectures, the AMD Ryzen 8050 "Strix Point" APUs are proposed to offer a 3x improvement in Generative AI capabilities. To help achieve this level of performance, the Strix Point APUs will embed the latest XDNA 2 NPUs & a far more robust Ryzen AI software suite.
Considering that AMD's Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" APUs offer up to 16 TOPs of performance, a 3x improvement with Ryzen 8050 "Strix Point" APUs means that we are looking at up to 48 TOPs of AI performance. That's almost 50 TOPs which will mark an impressive achievement for AMD's AI and NPU capabilities.
AMD Strix Point APUs: Ryzen 8050 Zen 5 & Zen 5C Hybrid Cores, RDNA 3.5 iGPUs, 2H 2024 Launch
The actual successor to the AMD Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" APUs will be Strix Point and Strix Point Halo, both of which will fall under the Ryzen 8050 APU family. These laptop chips will be separated into two segments since the Strix Point chips will offer a monolithic design with a mix of Zen 5C and Zen 5D cores while the higher-end Strix Halo chips will feature a chiplet design with the Zen 5C cores alone.
AMD Ryzen 8050 Strix Point Mono Expected Features:
- Zen 5 (4nm) Monolithic Design
- Up To 12 Cores In Hybrid Config (Zen 5 + Zen 5C)
- 32 MB of Shared L3 cache
- 35% Faster CPU Versus Phoenix at 50W
- 16 RDNA 3+ Compute Units
- On Par With RTX 3050 Max-Q
- 128-bit LPDDR5X Memory Controller
- XDNA 2 Engine Integrated
- ~25 TOPS AI Engine
- 2H 2024 Launch (Expected)
AMD Ryzen 8050 Strix Point Halo Expected Features:
- Zen 5 Chiplet Design
- Up To 16 Cores
- 64 MB of Shared L3 cache
- 25% Faster CPU Versus 16-Core Dragon Range at 90W
- 40 RDNA 3+ Compute Units
- On Par With RTX 4070 Max-Q (90W)
- 256-bit LPDDR5X Memory Controler
- XDNA 2 Engine Integrated
- ~50 TOPS AI Engine
- 2H 2024 Launch (Expected)
The AMD Strix Point APUs are expected to launch in the second half of 2024 with the first APU shipments to OEMs commencing next year. This will be around the same time Intel will be offering its Arrow Lake CPUs, the follow-up to Meteor Lake.
While Intel hasn't publicly disclosed the AI processing (TOPS) capability of its 1st Gen Core Ultra CPUs, they're also making a big deal out of the VPU which is a dedicated AI engine block on the upcoming chips that are launching next week. So it will be interesting to see how things go as AI will be a major PC driving force in 2024 with the likes of AMD, Apple, Intel & Qualcomm competing in the same space against each other.
AMD Ryzen Mobility CPUs:
| CPU Family Name | AMD Sound Wave? | AMD Bald Eagle Point | AMD Krackan Point | AMD Fire Range | AMD Strix Point Halo | AMD Strix Point | AMD Hawk Point | AMD Dragon Range | AMD Phoenix | AMD Rembrandt | AMD Cezanne | AMD Renoir | AMD Picasso | AMD Raven Ridge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family Branding | TBD | Ryzen AI 400 | TBD | TBD | Ryzen AI 300 | Ryzen AI 300 | AMD Ryzen 8040 (H/U-Series) | AMD Ryzen 7045 (HX-Series) | AMD Ryzen 7040 (H/U-Series) | AMD Ryzen 6000 AMD Ryzen 7035 | AMD Ryzen 5000 (H/U-Series) | AMD Ryzen 4000 (H/U-Series) | AMD Ryzen 3000 (H/U-Series) | AMD Ryzen 2000 (H/U-Series) |
| Process Node | TBD | 4nm | 4nm | 5nm | 4nm | 4nm | 4nm | 5nm | 4nm | 6nm | 7nm | 7nm | 12nm | 14nm |
| CPU Core Architecture | Zen 6? | Zen 5 + Zen 5C | Zen 5 | Zen 5 | Zen 5 + Zen 5C | Zen 5 + Zen 5C | Zen 4 + Zen 4C | Zen 4 | Zen 4 | Zen 3+ | Zen 3 | Zen 2 | Zen + | Zen 1 |
| CPU Cores/Threads (Max) | TBD | 12/24 | 8/16 | 16/32 | 16/32 | 12/24 | 8/16 | 16/32 | 8/16 | 8/16 | 8/16 | 8/16 | 4/8 | 4/8 |
| L2 Cache (Max) | TBD | 12 MB | TBD | TBD | 24 MB | 12 MB | 4 MB | 16 MB | 4 MB | 4 MB | 4 MB | 4 MB | 2 MB | 2 MB |
| L3 Cache (Max) | TBD | 24 MB + 16 MB SLC | 32 MB | TBD | 64 MB + 32 MB SLC | 24 MB | 16 MB | 32 MB | 16 MB | 16 MB | 16 MB | 8 MB | 4 MB | 4 MB |
| Max CPU Clocks | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | TBD | 5.1 GHz | TBD | 5.4 GHz | 5.2 GHz | 5.0 GHz (Ryzen 9 6980HX) | 4.80 GHz (Ryzen 9 5980HX) | 4.3 GHz (Ryzen 9 4900HS) | 4.0 GHz (Ryzen 7 3750H) | 3.8 GHz (Ryzen 7 2800H) |
| GPU Core Architecture | RDNA 3+ iGPU | RDNA 3.5 4nm iGPU | RDNA 3+ 4nm iGPU | RDNA 3+ 4nm iGPU | RDNA 3.5 4nm iGPU | RDNA 3.5 4nm iGPU | RDNA 3 4nm iGPU | RDNA 2 6nm iGPU | RDNA 3 4nm iGPU | RDNA 2 6nm iGPU | Vega Enhanced 7nm | Vega Enhanced 7nm | Vega 14nm | Vega 14nm |
| Max GPU Cores | TBD | 16 CUs (1024 Cores) | 12 CUs (786 cores) | 2 CUs (128 cores) | 40 CUs (2560 Cores) | 16 CUs (1024 Cores) | 12 CUs (786 cores) | 2 CUs (128 cores) | 12 CUs (786 cores) | 12 CUs (786 cores) | 8 CUs (512 cores) | 8 CUs (512 cores) | 10 CUs (640 Cores) | 11 CUs (704 cores) |
| Max GPU Clocks | TBD | 2900 MHz | TBD | TBD | TBD | 2900 MHz | 2800 MHz | 2200 MHz | 2800 MHz | 2400 MHz | 2100 MHz | 1750 MHz | 1400 MHz | 1300 MHz |
| TDP (cTDP Down/Up) | TBD | 15W-45W (65W cTDP) | 15W-45W (65W cTDP) | 55W-75W (65W cTDP) | 55W-125W | 15W-45W (65W cTDP) | 15W-45W (65W cTDP) | 55W-75W (65W cTDP) | 15W-45W (65W cTDP) | 15W-55W (65W cTDP) | 15W -54W(54W cTDP) | 15W-45W (65W cTDP) | 12-35W (35W cTDP) | 35W-45W (65W cTDP) |
| Launch | 2026? | 2025? | 2025? | 2H 2024? | 2H 2024? | 2H 2024 | Q1 2024 | Q1 2023 | Q2 2023 | Q1 2022 | Q1 2021 | Q2 2020 | Q1 2019 | Q4 2018 |
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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