AMD announces second-gen Ryzen Pro mobile chips

AMD has announced the release of second-generation Ryzen Pro and Athlon Pro mobile processors, both including built-in Radeon Vega graphics, ahead of its expected unveiling of Zen 2-based products in the coming months.

Announced back in June 2017, AMD's Ryzen Pro family marks the company's attempt to win back some of the high-volume mainstream enterprise business from rival Intel. While based on the same core architecture as their non-Pro equivalent parts, Ryzen Pro chips differentiate themselves with improved availability - a minimum of two years post-launch, the company pledges - and enhanced reliability and security features, including a standard 36-month warranty to system builders. In September that year AMD confirmed design wins with Dell, HP, and Lenovo, and by May 2018 the company was boasting of 'unprecedented' adoption of the parts.

Now, it has refreshed the Ryzen Pro mobile range with new 12nm parts based on the second-generation Zen+ microarchitecture - just in time for the launch of Zen 2, which is expected to be announced by the company in the coming months.

'Modern PC users expect the experience between professional and personal to be imperceptible, and business notebook users want to utilise the latest modern features including 3D modelling, video editing, multi-display setups, while multitasking securely, to get more done,' claims Saeid Moshkelani, senior vice president and general manager for Client Compute at AMD. 'With AMD Ryzen Pro and Athlon Pro mobile processors, AMD delivers the right performance, features, and choice to OEMs and commercial users, combined with the productivity, protection, and professional features needed to ensure seamless deployment throughout an organisation.'

The new Ryzen Pro chips, which are being branded as Ryzen Pro 3000 Series parts, come in three initial models: The four-core four-thread (4C4T) AMD Ryzen 3 Pro 3300U at 2.1GHz base and 3.5GHz boost with six peak 1,200MHz Radeon Vega graphics cores; the four-core eight-thread (4C8T) AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 3500U at 2.1GHz base and 3.7GHz boost with eight 1,200MHz Radeon Vega graphics cores; and the AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 3700U four-core eight-thread (4C8T) at 2.3GHz base and 4GHz boost with ten 1,400MHz Radeon Vega graphics cores. All three include 6MB of combined L2 and L3 cache memory and a 15W thermal design profile (TDP). For builders on a budget there's also the entry-level AMD Athlon Pro 300U, which is a dual-core four-thread (2C4T) 2.4GHz/3.3GHz part with just three Vega graphics cores running at 1,000MHz and 5MB of L2 and L3 combined cache.

AMD has confirmed design wins from HP and Lenovo, but so far neither company has offered a launch date.