Is AMD planning a face-off with Apple and Nvidia with its most powerful APU ever? Ryzen AI Max+ 395 is rumored to support 96GB of RAM and could run massive LLMs in memory without the need of a dedicated AI GPU

Leaks for the new Strix Halo based APU suggest it will be a beast

News By Wayne Williams published 2 October 2024

AMD is pushing the boundaries of integrated GPUs with its upcoming Ryzen AI Max series, based on the Strix Halo architecture, according to recent leaks and reports from various tech forums. Positioned to go beyond the Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, this series aims to offer exceptional performance in integrated graphics and processing power.

According to leaks from David Huang on X (formerly Twitter) and additional reports from Chinese tech forums, the Ryzen AI Max lineup will feature three models. The Ryzen AI Max 385 will have 8 CPU cores and an iGPU with 32 Compute Units (CUs). Above this is the Ryzen AI Max 390 with 12 cores and 40 CUs, while the flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 boasts 16 cores and 40 CUs.

These chips will reportedly have enough GPU power to outperform dedicated cards like the Radeon RX 7600 XT, making them ideal for for tasks like gaming, AI and professional workloads.

Zen 5 cores

Built on a chiplet design, Strix Halo will feature Zen 5 cores and powerful integrated graphics based on the RDNA 3.5 architecture.

On X, David Huang shared further details, stating, “Today I talked about gfx1151 with my group friends and found out that the RDNA3.5 on Strix Halo was added with a 192K complete VGPR [Vector General Purpose Registers] description in LLVM td not long ago, and various ROCm libraries have recently secretly added official support for Strix Halo... Combined with the CPU Geekbench 5 running score I saw before, it seems to have a full AVX512 width and twice the bandwidth per CCX. Can laptops and even tablets be used as supercomputers?"

The inclusion of up to 128GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 32MB MALL cache further boosts the potential for high-performance graphics and computing tasks. Strix Halo is also expected to support up to 96GB of memory for video processing, making it suitable for workstation applications and tasks like LLMs. The APUs will also feature a 60 TOPS NPU, enhancing AI processing capabilities.

The new Strix Halo APUs will likely debut early next year with CES 2025 expected to serve as the official launch platform. No doubt more information will appear the closer we get to the event.

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