The AMD CES 2023 Keynote Live Blog (6:30pm PT/02:30 UTC)

09:28PM EST - CES keynote season continues this week with the second major PC-centric keynote of the event, being held by AMD. Helmed as always by CEO Dr. Lisa Su, AMD is taking the center stage this evening to share their plans and products for consumer electronics for 2023. AMD is in the midst of rolling out their Zen 4 CPU architecture and RDNA 3 GPU architecture across their product lines, so there's ample space in both AMD's desktop and mobile product lineups to introduce some new parts – and we don't expect to come away empty-handed

09:29PM EST - I'm told that this will be a truely live presentation - not a pre-recorded video - which will make it the first live AMD keynote since before the pandemic

09:29PM EST - So no pressure, AMD 😉

09:30PM EST - This should run for an hour. And judging from past AMD CES keynotes it should be packed with announcements

09:30PM EST - Though the live format will hopefully mean it runs at a bit more moderate pace

09:31PM EST - It also means there's a chance it could go a bit long. Or start a bit late, as would seem to be the case here. But such is the nature of live presentations

09:32PM EST - Speaking broadly based on announcements and meetings for this year's show, the PC presence as CES 2023 looks to be only light-to-modest

09:32PM EST - There are plenty of laptops to show off, thanks to several companies offering new parts suitable for mobile systems

09:33PM EST - But the rest of the PC ecosystem has a lighter footprint. In part because AMD and Intel just launched their current desktop platforms a few months ago

09:34PM EST - Even VESA isn't in South Hall this year. Those companies that are at the show are increasingly doing private suites for smaller audiences

09:34PM EST - And here we go

09:35PM EST - Starting with an inspirational video

09:36PM EST - Looks like this is a generic CES bumper, rather than an AMD video

09:36PM EST - And speaking of CES, first on the stage is the CTA chairman, Gary Shapiro

09:37PM EST - Gary is talking briefly about AMD, and how things have changed since the pandemic

09:38PM EST - (The pandemic still weighs heavily on CES; attendance is still around half it was at its peak in 2020)

09:38PM EST - And now talking about Dr. Lisa Su and her many accomplishments

09:38PM EST - And here's Lisa

09:39PM EST - Or will be, after this video bumper

09:40PM EST - Okay, this is a promo reel for AMD. Together we advance_

09:40PM EST - (It could use some glowsticks)

09:41PM EST - Lisa welcomes the crowd and talks about how wonderful it is to be here in person

09:41PM EST - This is THE official opening keynote for CES. The one Microsoft used to helm for a very long time. It goes to show how things have changed

09:42PM EST - AMD wants to push the envelope on high performance computing and other technologies

09:43PM EST - Starting things with AI

09:43PM EST - "AI is truly the most important megatrend for tech"

09:44PM EST - "We need CPUs, GPUs, and adaptive accelerators"

09:44PM EST - Starting with a brand new accelerator, based on XDNA

09:44PM EST - The first use of the XDNA architecture will be in notebooks

09:44PM EST - Announcing the Ryzen 7040 series

09:45PM EST - This is AMD's next gen processor for notebooks

09:45PM EST - It sports a dedicated AI engine called Ryzen AI, based on the XDNA architecture

09:46PM EST - 4nm process technology, more than 25B transistors (almost 2x as many as Ryzen 6000 Rembrandt)

09:46PM EST - Claiming it's faster than Intel and Apple

09:46PM EST - Though the 1280P is an odd choice; that's one of Intel's 28W CPUs

09:47PM EST - AMD loves Cinebench. Or perhaps rather Cinebench loves AMD's architecture

09:47PM EST - 30% faster than Apple (unclear which product), 45% faster than Intel

09:47PM EST - AMD is claiming 30 hours of video playback battery life on the 7040 series thanks in part to TSMC's 4nm process

09:48PM EST - First Ryzen 7040 notebooks in March

09:48PM EST - More than 250 laptop wins in total for AMD's complete Ryzen 7000 Mobile series portfolio

09:49PM EST - Now it's time for a guest break

09:49PM EST - Microsoft EVP and Chief Product Officer, Panos Panay

09:49PM EST - "Your jacket's pretty rad"

09:49PM EST - "Panos was not supposed to embarass me in the first 5 seconds"

09:50PM EST - Microsoft, of course, is a key partner for AMD. Without Windows, there's arguably no market for x86 CPUs

09:51PM EST - Talking about current AMD-powered products, such as the Xbox Series X|S

09:51PM EST - And Pluton security as well

09:51PM EST - (This did not get the applause that the Xbox did)

09:52PM EST - Microsoft is on-board with AMD's AI efforts

09:52PM EST - Making technology more personal by harnessing the power of AI

09:52PM EST - "It is our next step in our journey together"

09:53PM EST - Microsoft wants to use every TOP that AMD can put on a chip

09:54PM EST - Talking about Window Portrait Studio effects as an example of functions that can be AI-accelerated

09:54PM EST - Moving it to the Ryzen AI engine offers better performance for this effects at a fraction of the power

09:54PM EST - And it frees up the CPU cores for other things

09:55PM EST - "Just like the mouse helped reinvent the GUI, [...] AI is going to reinvent how you do everything on Windows. Quite literally"

09:56PM EST - The models are so useful but compute intensive that Microsoft hasn't been able to do it before

09:56PM EST - "It's going to require an OS that blurs the line between the cloud and the edge"

09:56PM EST - And that's Panos. Lisa thanks him for the partnership

09:56PM EST - Now moving on to the subject of hybrid work

09:57PM EST - Employees like working from home. But connectivity issues present them problems

09:57PM EST - Online meetings never go quite as well as they should

09:58PM EST - Now for another guest: Enrique Lores, HP's President and CEO

09:58PM EST - Enrique is talking about how quickly things have changed with remote work

09:59PM EST - Making opportunities for disruption and for innovation

10:00PM EST - HP and AMD working together creates innovation

10:00PM EST - HP announced their new Dragonfly Pro notebook

10:00PM EST - Ryzen-powered

10:02PM EST - HP has integrated the experiences that customers are demanding

10:02PM EST - And Lisa talks about the benefits of closely optimizing hardware and software together

10:02PM EST - HP will have a full portfolio of Ryzen Mobile 7040-powered devices in the spring

10:02PM EST - And that's Enrique

10:03PM EST - Now moving on to gaming

10:03PM EST - "At AMD, gaming is in our DNA"

10:03PM EST - AMD has great Ryzen and Radeon products for gaming. Not to mention the AMD-powered consoles

10:04PM EST - Recapping the products they launched in the last few months

10:04PM EST - A number of mobile and desktop products to talk about

10:04PM EST - Ryzen Mobile 7045X series

10:04PM EST - Up to 16 Zen 4 cores, boost clocks up to 5.4GHz, 5nm process node

10:05PM EST - So AMD has brought desktop Ryzen (Raphael) to laptops

10:05PM EST - Touting AMD's performance advantage over Intel's 12900HX

10:05PM EST - RDNA3 is coming to laptops

10:05PM EST - Radeon RX 7000 Mobile GPUs

10:06PM EST - Announcing Radeon RX 7600M XT

10:06PM EST - RDNA3, 32 CUs, 8GB GDDR6, and a configurable TDP

10:06PM EST - Comparing it to NVIDIA's RTX 3060

10:06PM EST - Ryzen 7045 and Radeon 7600M laptops hitting the shelves in February

10:07PM EST - Now time for another guest speaker: Matt Zielinski of Lenovo

10:08PM EST - Lenovo is arguably one of AMD's closest OEM partners. They've been willing to use AMD's products at times when other OEMs have not

10:08PM EST - And of course, Lenovo was AMD's Threadripper Pro exclusive partner

10:09PM EST - Tomorrow Lenovo will be introing their next generation of Lenovo Legion gaming laptops

10:10PM EST - "Most powerful gaming laptop we've ever released"

10:10PM EST - And Lenovo is on-board with AMD's AI efforts as well

10:11PM EST - Lenovo will have 50+ laptops and desktops powered by AMD in 2023

10:11PM EST - And that's Lenovo

10:11PM EST - Now on to desktops

10:12PM EST - (The crowd is a bit more mild than what Lisa is used to)

10:12PM EST - Lisa is now talking about AMD's 3D V-Cache technology and the resulting X3D processors

10:12PM EST - Announcing 3D V-Cache to the Ryzen 7000 family

10:12PM EST - Ryzen 7 7800X3D

10:13PM EST - 8 cores, 5nm, 5GHz, lots of cache

10:13PM EST - Delivers around 15% more performance than the 5800X3D

10:13PM EST - In games

10:13PM EST - But wait, there's more!

10:13PM EST - 12 core and 16 core X3D processors

10:14PM EST - Ryzen 9 7950X3D. 16 Cores, 5.7GHz boost, 144MB L2 + L3 cache (so 128MB L3)

10:14PM EST - Comparing performance to the Core i9-13900K

10:14PM EST - Now rolling a trailer of Star Wars: Jedi Survivor

10:14PM EST - "Developed on Ryzen for Ryzen"

10:15PM EST - "That looks great, doesn't it?"

10:15PM EST - Will be bundling it with select Ryzen 7000 CPUs later this month

10:15PM EST - New X3D parts coming in Feburary

10:16PM EST - And new 65W CPUs. And new entry-level AM5 motherboards to give AMD an edge at every price point in the market

10:16PM EST - Now on to the subject of adaptive computing

10:16PM EST - Last year AMD acquired Xilinx

10:17PM EST - Now AMD is going to put their FPGAs to use for adaptive computing

10:17PM EST - Talking about the use cases for the hardware. Starting with health care

10:17PM EST - Time for another guest: Bob DeSantis, EVP and Chief Product Officer of Intuitive

10:18PM EST - (These blue suits are perhaps not the right shade of color for being on AMD's stage)

10:18PM EST - Intuitive works at the intersections of health care and robotics technology

10:19PM EST - e.g. the Da Vinci surgical robot

10:19PM EST - Rolling a video about Intuitive's platforms

10:20PM EST - Single port, multi-port, and non-invasive

10:21PM EST - Enabling surgeons to see more and do a better job

10:21PM EST - "AMD is critical for us"

10:21PM EST - AMD's adaptive computing tech is a key component

10:22PM EST - Using it in real-time computing and low latency workloads

10:22PM EST - Intuitive can use the same parts across multiple platforms by changing their programming/design

10:23PM EST - And improved robotics can in turn result in better diagnostics and treatments

10:23PM EST - "We believe we're at the tip of the iceberg"

10:24PM EST - And that's Intuitive

10:25PM EST - AMD is announcing new Vitis imaging libraries for their customer basis

10:25PM EST - Rolling a video from another AMD partner: Clairis

10:25PM EST - Handheld ultrasound

10:26PM EST - Using AMD's Zynq hardware

10:27PM EST - And now on to the Metaverse

10:27PM EST - Time for another guest: Peggy Johnson, CEO of MagicLeap

10:28PM EST - AR and VR are two very different techs and use cases

10:28PM EST - VR for entertainment. AR for augmenting the physical world

10:29PM EST - Lisa congratulates Peggy on the launch of Magic Leap 2

10:29PM EST - Talking about text legibility, and localized dimming

10:30PM EST - Magic Leap needed a high performance processor

10:30PM EST - Using a custom AMD processor

10:30PM EST - Lisa reiterates the virtue of optimizing silicon, systems, and software together

10:32PM EST - Talking about a use case for the Magic Leap with medical imaging

10:32PM EST - Now certified for use in operating rooms

10:32PM EST - What's next? Growing the content ecosystem. And then make is smaller (just glasses would be ideal)

10:33PM EST - Offloading the compute required for AR off to other computers

10:33PM EST - And that's MagicLeap

10:34PM EST - "AMD has also been a trusted partner in aerospace for decades"

10:34PM EST - Another guest to talk about AMD's presence in space: Dr. Cady Coleman, Former NASA Astronaut

10:35PM EST - Dr. Coleman's background is in material science

10:36PM EST - Dr. Coleman is talking about some of her missions and what she did. Living on the ISS, deplying telescopes, etc

10:36PM EST - (This is another field where AMD has inherited a lot of presence via Xilinx)

10:37PM EST - Hi ho! AMD's embargoes have expired

10:37PM EST - Read all about the Ryzen 7000X3D Series here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/18709/amd-unveils-ryzen-9-7950x3d-7900x3d-and-ryzen-7-7800x3d-up-to-128-mb-of-l3-cache-and-5-7-ghz-boost

10:37PM EST - And the new Ryzen Mobile 7000 series stack, including the 7040/Phoenix silicon: https://www.anandtech.com/show/18718/amd-2023-ryzen-mobile-7000-cpus-unveiled-zen-4-phoenix-takes-point

10:38PM EST - Ryzen 7000 65W CPUs: https://www.anandtech.com/show/18715/amd-announces-ryzen-9-7900-ryzen-7-7000-and-ryzen-5-7600-processors-zen-4-at-65-w

10:38PM EST - Amd AMD's Ryzen Mobile 7000 HX-series processors: https://www.anandtech.com/show/18716/amd-announces-ryzen-7045-hx-series-cpus-for-laptops-up-to-16-cores-and-5-4-ghz

10:39PM EST - AMD's tech was used in the Artemis I (SLS) mission

10:40PM EST - It was a successful mission. The next one will have humans aboard

10:40PM EST - Adpative tech used for engine controllers, sensors, and elsewhere

10:42PM EST - Lisa considers Dr. Coleman a role model (for obvious reasons)

10:43PM EST - "Curiosity is fundamental to exploration"

10:43PM EST - Dr. Coleman went to the same college as Lisa

10:44PM EST - And that's Dr. Cady Coleman

10:45PM EST - One final area of the night: sustainable computing for datacenters

10:45PM EST - All the big datacenter players are using AMD in some fashion these days

10:46PM EST - WETA FX is also using AMD hardware

10:46PM EST - Specifically, AMD EPYC CPUs in data center rendering hardware

10:47PM EST - AMD: together we advance entertainment

10:47PM EST - Recapping last November's EPYC (Genoa) launch

10:48PM EST - EPYC delivers better performance with greater energy efficiency

10:48PM EST - Which is a huge advantage to datacenter operators in terms of CapEx and OpEx

10:49PM EST - The total numbers for datacenter energy usage add up

10:49PM EST - Going to preview AMD's first inference accelerator

10:49PM EST - AMD Alveo V70

10:50PM EST - XDNA-based, scaled up for use in servers

10:50PM EST - 400 TOPS of AI performance

10:50PM EST - Talking up the performance advantage versus NVIDIA's T4

10:50PM EST - Pre-orders start today. Availabiltiy in the spring

10:51PM EST - Now talking up the Frontier exaflop supercomputer, which is powered by AMD processors

10:51PM EST - AMD has been working to develop the first chip that brings together a datacenter CPU and GPU and memory into a single design

10:52PM EST - CDNA 3 architecture, 24 Zen 4 cores

10:52PM EST - 128GB of HBM3

10:52PM EST - 3D stacking to put multiple CPU and GPU chiplets on top of a base die

10:52PM EST - 146B transistors

10:53PM EST - 9 5nm chiplets, on top of 4 6nm chiplets. Significant HBM surrounding it

10:53PM EST - The most complex chip AMD has ever built

10:53PM EST - Far more efficient than the MI250X

10:54PM EST - AMD is looking to bring model training from months to weeks

10:54PM EST - Currently in the labs, and sampling to customers shortly. Coming to the market for HPC and AI solutions in the second half of 2023

10:55PM EST - And now summing up tonight's presentation

10:55PM EST - "Have a great night!"