New AMD Ryzen PRO, Athlon PRO processors added to AMD lineup

AMD released four new additions to its mobile processor lineup aimed at powering commercial notebooks across a range of budgets and workflows. According to AMD, the 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen PRO 3000 series and AMD Athlon PRO 300 series will provide commercial- and enterprise-level users with longer battery life, powerful graphics processing and added security features.

The new line of AMD mobile processors includes the Ryzen 7 PRO 3700U, Ryzen 5 PRO 3500U, Ryzen 3 PRO 3300U and Athlon PRO 300U, all of which feature Radeon Vega graphics. All four processors have a thermal design power of 15 W, which puts this AMD line in the arena of thin laptops.

The 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen PRO series features four cores and up to eight threads, while the AMD Athlon Pro chip has two cores and four threads. The second-gen Ryzen PRO processors are based on 12 nm Zen+ architecture, and the Athlon PRO is based on 14 nm Zen. The inclusion of Athlon PRO in the product line opens opportunities for AMD processors to appear in lower-end laptops.

AMD promises up to 12 hours of battery life for business computers -- a 51% increase from older versions -- as well as up to 16% improvement in CPU performance from previous generations of AMD chips.

AMD also claimed to outperform competition -- Intel being the other top player -- on a multitude of fronts. When compared with Intel's 2017 i7-8650 chip, AMD recorded its Ryzen 7 PRO 3700U chip to be 36% faster in photo editing, 64% faster in 3D modeling and up to 258% faster in visualization; AMD's graphics success can be attributed to its incorporation of Radeon Vega 10.

According to AMD, the Ryzen PRO and Athlon PRO series are the only processors with a full set of security features built in. AMD GuardMI provides a variety of protections:

• Secure Boot secures BIOS from power on and prevents threats from reaching critical software.
• OS security protects against system attacks.
• Memory encryption protects against cold boot attacks.
• Trusted application enablement allows Ryzen PRO to run third-party security features.

The new AMD mobile processors could appear in a range of PCs, from low-end systems suitable for web browsing and general office productivity to business systems built for data analysis and video conferencing. AMD also claimed its new processors are suitable for professional-grade notebook tasks, like premium content creation, software development and scientific applications. HP Inc. and Lenovo are two device makers with plans to release commercial notebook products powered by AMD Ryzen PRO and Athlon PRO mobile processors later this quarter.

AMD unveiled a 7 nm gaming GPU in January, and its stock price has increased approximately 50% since, peaking at $29.09 in early April. It plans to release another 7 nm architecture, Navi, later this year. Intel's most recent release was its 2018 ninth-generation Core i9-9900K gaming processor, but the vendor plans to release 10^th-gen processors based on 10 nm architecture later this year -- and in consumer-grade products by 2020 -- that should amplify competition with Intel and Nvidia.