AMD announces Ryzen 8040 series 'Hawk Point' APUs: Zen 4 CPU, RDNA 3 GPU, XDNA for AI

AMD has just detailed its new Ryzen 8040 series APUs that are codenamed Hawk Point, where they will feature Zen 4 CPU cores, RDNA 3 GPU cores, and an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) and its Ryzen AI core.

3

The new flagship AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS processor features 8 cores and 16 threads, boosting up to 5.2GHz and packing a Radeon 780M RDNA 3-based GPU that features 12 Compute Units and a 35-54W TDP. There are a few different families of Hawk Point APUs here, with 1 x Ryzen 9 and 3 x Ryzen 7 APUs that are all 8-core, 16-thread parts.

Under that, we've got 5 x Ryzen 5 APUs that are 6-core, 12-thread chips, while there's a Ryzen 3 APU with 4 cores and 8 threads at the bottom of the Ryzen 8040 series APU stack. Each of them has on-board graphics and an NPU... except for the last two Ryzen 8040 series CPUs (the Ryzen 5 8540U and Ryzen 3 8440U both don't have NPUs).

AMD is keeping boost clocks of its new Hawk Point APUs above, or very close to 5.0GHz for most of the Ryzen 8040 series APUs. We have 5.2GHz at the top, while the 3 next CPUs -- Ryzen 7 8845HS, Ryzen 7 8840HS, and Ryzen 7 8840U -- all feature a 5.1GHz boost clock. Each of these APUs is the same in terms of CPU core count and GPUs (all with Radeon 780M), with the difference here being the TDP (35-45W at the top end, 20-30W for the 8840HS, and 15-30W for the 8840U).

Under that, we've got the 6-core, 12-thread Ryzen 8040 series APUs -- the Ryzen 5 8645HS, 8640HS, 8640U, and 8540U -- each with a Radeon 760M GPU, except for the Ryzen 5 8450U, which has a Radeon 740M GPU. But, we have low TDPs across the board here as well ranging between 35-45W for the 8645HS, down to 15-30W for the 8540U.

Note: AMD's new Ryzen 5 8540U and Ryzen 3 8440U processors are both based on the refreshed Phoenix2 die, which doesn't feature an NPU, so you've got no AI abilities on those two APUs.

3

AMD is promising that the new Ryzen 8040 series APUs and their included XDNA NPU will boost performance by 50% in generative AI workloads like Meta's Llama2 or Vision Models, up and over the Ryzen 7040 series APUs.

We are to expect AMD to have its new Ryzen 8040 series APUs in Q1 2024, where we should expect some Ryzen 8040-powered laptops unveiled at CES 2024, which is just a few weeks away now.