AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su has held the opening keynote address for Computex 2024, and we were there.
AMD was pretty light on the ground at last year's Computex after it got bumped from its traditional position as the opening keynote for the conference (it was given to Nvidia instead), but even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's unofficial, pre-Computex keynote can't stop AMD from plowing ahead and hopefully unveiling some juice new hardware for us.
After all, this is now the era of the AI PC, and after Microsoft's Copilot+ PC event last month with some special attention paid to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X SoCs, all eyes are going to be on Dr. Su's keynote for anything new on the hardware front. Here's all the live analysis and news as it happened.
How to watch the AMD keynote
I've gone ahead and embedded the link for AMD's keynote below in case you want to follow along with me, with my hot takes and analysis below the stream.
Howdy folks, this is John, TechRadar's components editor, and I'm on the ground in Taipei covering all the latest from Computex 2024, including AMD's opening keynote in person.
I'll be keeping y'all updated as Dr. Su's address rolls out, and we expect to see some hardware today, given all of the rumors we've been hearing for the past couple of months, but whether it will be desktop, laptop, or something else remains to be seen.
Whatever it is, though, I'll be here bring it all to you live, as it happens, from the Nangang Exhibition Center in Taipei.
So I'm seated in the event space, and I can tell you that it was a nightmare getting in here, it was so thronged with people. Far more than last year's Computex opening keynote.
Sigh, if I hear someone say "we tought sand how to think!" I'm going to scream.
The head of Taitra the trade organization that puts together Computex, is speaking now.
So the move to AI is remarkable, but lets also keep it in perspective. The AI we are dealing with now is not an 'intelligence'. It's a very, very sophisticated algorithm. Intelligence requires more than just a series of steps to acheive an output. It requires you to make the cognitive leaps to create something in your mind that wasn't there before. Yes, it's a synergy of everything you know, so generative AIs do mimic that, but they cannot take the creative leap required for an actual intelligence.
We're now talking about the major themes of the show, which you can imagine, is heavily focused on AI. Everyone is really banking on AI technology to help boost PC sales after a few years of declining sales.
400 startups at InnoVEX 2024, with about 100 of them focused on AI systems, software, and products.
Taitra's James Huang is introducing Dr. Lisa Su, AMD's CEO, who will officially open up the conference.
AMD Zen 5 core incoming.
AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors are official.
An average of 16% uplift.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X first.
16 Cores, 32 threads, 80MB cache.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, AMD Ryzen 9 9900X, AMD Ryzen 7 9700X, and AMD Ryzen 5 9600X, all coming in July 2024.
AMD Ryzen AI 300 series. 50 TOPS of Int8 AI performance.
The fastest NPU on the market.
OK, interesting comp sci stuff, Int8 data types are better for performance, but FP16 is better for accuracy, and AMD's XDNA 2 NPU will support Block FP16, which is a merger of the two, offering better accuracy with Int8-like performance.
AMD and Microsoft Copilot+ PCs are getting some love right now.
We're seeing the Copilot+ pesentation we saw at the Microsoft Copilot+ event last month.
My apologies folks, the WiFi in the presentation hall is pretty much dial-up speeds right now considering how many people are in here on this network. We'll get there though!
150+ AI-powered software partners in 024, like Adobe.
Enrique Lorez, HP CEO joining Dr. Su onstage to talk about how AI will help companies do their work.
Lorenz is showing off one of its latest laptops, the HP OmniBook, the first laptop with 50 TOPS in the device. Of course, if you have a discrete GPU in your laptop, you have many times more TOPS, but not in an NPU.
Some self-deprecating language skill discourse from Dr. Su and Lorenz.
So now we're looking at the other performance for Strix Point. CPU performance is supantially better in some cases than competitors' chips. 3D rendering in Blender looks especially good for AMD.
Lenovo's CEO is on stage now with Su to talk about how AI will help automatically choose the optimal settings for gaming on Legion laptops. Of course, you could technically do this without AI, but if it can do it more seamlessly, why not?
Lenovo Yoga, ThinkPad, and ThinkBook laptops with AMD Ryzen AI 300 SoCs coming later this year.
Lenovo is developing its own app for assisting users in generating their own images using generative AI. It's only text prompt-based, so honestly I'd just stick with Microsoft Cocreator, which lets you do a text prompt and do some sketching to help refine the output as you envision it.
Jonney Shih, Asus chairman is on stage now. He does not have a laptop with him.
Shih is talking about the future of the AI ecosystem. OK, new Asus laptops with AMD Ryzen AI 300 chips will be the first to come to market in July.
Asus StoryCube is an AI photo and video curator on your PC, which can categorize your media to make it easier to find the photos and videos you need when you need it.
Asus ROG Ally X won't have the new AMD Ryzen AI 300, but it will have other upgraded hardware.
OK, we're moving onto enterprise/commercial stuff like healthcare, automotive, and industrial applications.
Versal AI Edge Series Gen 2 early access now available for industry partners.
Now for data center. Let's see if we hear anything about energy efficiency. Please, for the love of God, can we try and reduce all this power demand?
OK, so switching from legacy server CPUs will reduce a data center's server power consumption by 65%. I'm not optimistic at all about the potential for data centers to eventually reduce power consumption, but it's nice to at least see that someone cares about this.
5th Gen AMD Epyc 'Turin' processors can have up to 192 cores and 384 threads. Woof.
AMD Turin on track for launch in the second half of 2024.
CTO of Stability.ai on stage now. Stable Diffusion 3 Public Access launching on June 12.
Stable Diffusion 3 might finally get human hands right.
Shots fired at Nvidia H100. Stable diffusion gets 32MP on H100, but can get up to 100MP on AMD Instinct M1300.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella makes an appearance via video. All of these companies really want AMD Instinct to be a thing. Nvidia needs competition to bring the price of these GPUs down.
LOL, ok, nice dig at Nvidia there. Su asked ChatGPT-4 who is giving the opening keynote at Computex 2024, and it correctly notes that Lisa Su is giving the opening keynote, not Jensen Huang, despite Nvidia's attempt to cloud that issue a bit with last night's event.
Lastly, AMD and others have partnered to create an open standard for GPU networking called Ultra Accelerator Link. Notably, Nvidia doesn't appear to be part of that consortium, but if they are, AMD wouldn't necessarily want to note that fact. This is AMD vs Nvidia we're talking about, after all.
We're wrapping up now.
So the big take aways for most are the Ryzen 9000 series chips as well as the Ryzen AI 300 SoCs. Obviously, if you're into data center stuff, there was plenty for you as well, but I'm grateful that there was at least a passing mention fo reducing power consumption in data centers, unlike Nvidia's presentation last night.
I'll have a lot more to say about all this later today, but I'll leave it there for now, since I need to run out to a Q & A session with AMD. Take care folks, and as always, be kind to each other.
