AMD is unfazed by Intel’s new collaboration with Nvidia, according to Jason Banta, corporate vice president and general manager of client OEM at AMD. In an interview, Banta said AMD is very confident in its roadmap and highlighted Strix Halo products, the code name for the Ryzen AI Max series introduced in January. AMD has billed the mobile system-on-chip as the most advanced x86 laptop processor yet, citing strong performance across CPU, GPU and NPU workloads and the ability to allocate up to 96 GB of system memory to the GPU. The company claims leadership in key tasks including 3-D rendering and Artificial Intelligence inference versus top chips from Intel, Apple and Nvidia.
The comments come after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described an upcoming Intel-Nvidia PC product as a giant system-on-chip that fuses custom Intel CPU and Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets to create a new class of integrated graphics laptops, a category he said addresses roughly 150 million laptop shipments annually. AMD is also preparing for fresh competition from Qualcomm, which recently revealed Snapdragon X2 Elite processors for Windows PCs featuring an NPU rated at 80 TOPS and new out-of-band PC management technology. Banta said AMD remains confident in its ability to compete across notebooks, desktops, handhelds and other form factors.
Beyond product strategy, Banta pointed to AMD’s commercial PC momentum, citing great success with Ryzen Pro and Ryzen AI Pro offerings and out-of-band management support that integrates with mainstream tools such as Microsoft Autopilot and Intune. AMD’s commercial PC revenue grew in the first half of the year, aligning with recent remarks from CEO Lisa Su that Ryzen Pro sell-through rose 30 percent year over year in the first quarter and sales to OEMs for commercial PCs increased 25 percent in the second quarter. The company has expanded OEM availability, including its first commercial PC deal with Dell Technologies earlier in the year, and expected as of January to see more than 150 consumer and commercial PC designs ship with Ryzen AI processors in 2025.
Customers migrating from competitive platforms are seeing better performance and battery life alongside familiar form factors and OEM relationships, Banta said. AMD is also promoting what it calls the largest portfolio of commercial Copilot+ PCs, devices with Microsoft’s exclusive on-device Artificial Intelligence features supported by NPUs with at least 40 TOPS. Meanwhile, distribution executives report rising channel aggressiveness among semiconductor vendors around competitive bids and demo units, a trend reflecting the intensifying PC silicon race.
