Components & Peripherals News
AMD Ryzen Pro Boss Talks ‘Phenomenal’ Lenovo Partnership, H-Series Expansion
Dylan Martin
The head of AMD’s commercial client business talks to CRN about what’s new in the Ryzen Pro 6000 CPUs coming out this year, AMD’s ‘phenomenal’ partnership with Lenovo on the new ThinkPad Z laptops and why Ryzen Pro is expanding to H-series models for mobile workstations.
Matthew Unangst Teases AMD’s New Ryzen Pro 6000 CPUs
The head of AMD’s Ryzen Pro business said the chipmaker’s partnership with Lenovo on the new ThinkPad Z laptops represents an unprecedented level of collaboration with an OEM for the chipmaker, and he’s hoping more design wins like it will follow.
“I think, frankly speaking, we’ve learned a lot in that process with Lenovo. It’s been an outstanding collaboration experience and their partnership has been phenomenal,” said Matthew Unangst, senior director of AMD’s commercial client and workstation business, in a recent interview with CRN.
[Related: AMD’s 5 Biggest Announcements At CES 2022 ]
Lenovo announced the new ThinkPad Z13 and Z16 at CES 2022 in January, and both laptops are among the first that will use AMD’s Ryzen Pro 6000 CPUs and Microsoft’s Pluton security processor. What’s more, the ThinkPad Z13 uses a custom AMD processor, the Ryzen 7 Pro 6860Z.
Unangst said AMD and Lenovo spent a lot of time making sure the new laptops were optimized first and foremost for collaboration experiences, which are key in the new era of hybrid work environments. He called it the “most ultimate solution we’ve ever brought to market on that side of things.”
“This has been a long-term collaboration between us and Lenovo,” he said. “And frankly, we’ve gone through every single aspect of that platform together to make sure that every piece of it is optimized to deliver the best platform in the world.”
While AMD plans to make an official launch announcement for the new Ryzen Pro 6000 CPUs in the next few months, Unangst talked to CRN about what partners can expect from the new processors, which will come with enterprise-level features for security, remote management and reliability.
“That Zen 3+ core, that RDNA 2 graphics and that new adaptive power management system, that’s going to allow us to continue to deliver just outstanding performance on real-world applications, which has been a strong suit of ours over the last few generations,” he said.
In his interview with CRN, Unangst talked about what’s new in the Ryzen Pro 6000 CPUs coming out this year, why the lineup has expanded to include H-series models for mobile workstations, how AMD is addressing the lack of a Ryzen 3 in the lineup, the health of the commercial desktop business and how AMD collaborated with Lenovo on the new ThinkPad Z laptops, among other things.
