AMD reportedly planning Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme APU for gaming handhelds, with NPU for AI workloads

AMD is reportedly gearing up to add "AI" to the name of its new gaming handheld APU, with rumors of the new Ryzen Z2 family of processors seeing a flagship Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme APU.

In a new post on X by leaker Hoang Anh Phu, we're hearing that the Ryzen Z2, Ryzen Z2 A, Ryzen Z2 Go, Ryzen Z2 Extreme, and Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme APUs will take the gaming handheld processor battle to Intel and its Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" series of processors.

Each of the Ryzen Z2 series APUs will have a mix of Zen 3, Zen 4, or Zen 5 processor cores with integrated GPUs that range between RDNA 2, RDNA 3, and RDNA 3.5. The flagship Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme APU will reportedly feature Strix Point silicon with up to 8 cores, and 16 threads of Zen 5/c cores, and up to 16 cores of RDNA 3.5-based GPU... and we can't miss out on that XDNA 2-based NPU for AI workloads.

• Read more: AMD's next-gen Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU spotted: 8-core CPU, RDNA 3.5 GPU
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It seems that AMD's purported Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme APU will be the only processor in the Z2 series to feature an NPU for AI workloads, but we could expect one of them -- the Ryzen Z2 A -- to have some form of AI functionality. Strix Point APUs ship with their NPU chips in-tact, but AMD disables them for gaming handhelds... but it appears it's back on the table the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme.