AMD Announces New Ultrathin Notebook Design Wins, New “Mendocino” Mobile Processor

AMD in its Computex 2022 presentation announced several design wins for its Ryzen 6000U line of high-performance processors for ultra-thin notebooks. With configurable TDPs of 15 W and 28 W, these processors feature an 8-core/16-thread “Zen 3” CPU, an iGPU with up to 12 RDNA2 compute units, and a modern I/O that combines DDR5 memory with PCI-Express Gen 4, to bring gaming to ultra-thin form-factors without the need for a discrete GPU. The iGPU meets DirectX 12 Ultimate feature requirements, and AMD leverages technologies such as FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), to further improve gaming performance.

Among the new design wins are the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED, a 13-inch ultra-thin weighing only 1 kg, and capable of average 60 FPS in “Godfall,” taking advantage of FSR. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro X is another notebook in this class capable of 1080p gaming, powered by the Ryzen 7 6800HS, with up to 122 FPS in CS:GO, up to 266 FPS in “League of Legends,” up to 59 FPS in “Shadow of the Tomb Raider,” up to 64 FPS in “Final Fantasy: XIV,” and up to 46 FPS in “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.”

AMD also sees its Ryzen PRO notebook SoCs rising to the demand of the new-generation Hybrid Workforce that spends twice as much time collaborating remotely via Microsoft Teams, with a majority wanting the option of working remotely to stay; but a majority also being given notebooks by their companies that are over four years old. This creates opportunity for AMD to power the new crop of commercial notebooks with its Ryzen PRO 6000 mobile processors. AMD says that over 60 new commercial notebook designs are launching in 2022 powered by AMD Ryzen—notably the Lenovo ThinkPad Z, and the HP EliteBook 865 G9. Besides performance from the 8-core/16-thread “Zen 3” CPU, the AMD-powered EliteBook 865 G9 set records in battery-life in Mobilemark 18.AMD is announcing a new class of processors for mainstream notebooks with high battery life, the Ryzen “Mendocino” mobile processors. The first of these will power mainstream notebooks launching in Q4-2022. These are interesting SoCs that combine a 4-core/8-thread CPU based on the older “Zen 2” microarchitecture, with an iGPU based on the latest RDNA2 graphics architecture, and the rest of its I/O and power-optimization features being carried over from the Ryzen 6000 series. “Mendocino” sounds familiar? Then you’ve been following the Tech Industry for a long time. Intel used the Mendocino codename around 1999, for their P6 architecture based Celerons (one generation before Netburst). While Intel Mendocino was built on a 250 nanometer process, AMD uses TSMC’s N6 (6 nm) silicon fabrication process, 40x (!) smaller. The features in AMD Mendocino combine to give mainstream notebooks increased battery life in the region of 10 hours or more. Notebooks based on these chips will be priced in the $399 to $699 range.