Latest news with #AMD
Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
Best slim laptops for portability and performance: Top 10 picks from top brands
Laptops are getting thinner, lighter and more powerful, but not all slim machines are built the same. As manufacturers compete to shave off millimetres and grams without cutting corners on performance, the choices in 2025 are smarter than ever. From streamlined ultrabooks to compact powerhouses, this curated list picks out ten of the best slim laptops worth your attention. Whether you need something for travel, remote work or everyday tasks, these models prove you do not need to trade power for portability. The Apple MacBook Air M1 is a game-changer in the slim laptop segment, featuring Apple's M1 chip for remarkable performance and battery life. Its 13.3-inch Retina display delivers vibrant visuals, and the fanless design ensures silent operation. With 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD, it handles multitasking and everyday productivity with ease. Touch ID, a backlit keyboard, and seamless integration with iPhone/iPad enhance the user experience. Lightweight and highly portable, it's ideal for students and professionals who value reliability and longevity. What are buyers saying on Amazon? Buyers find the MacBook Air powerful, lightweight, with top display, silent operation, and great battery life. Apps and games run smoothly. Why consider this product? It offers a premium build, long battery, excellent performance, and great value, outperforming similarly priced Windows laptops. The 2022 MacBook Air M2 stands out with a refreshed, ultra-thin design and a larger 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display. Powered by the M2 chip, it offers faster performance and improved graphics, making it suitable for creative tasks. The 1080p webcam and four-speaker audio system enhance video calls and media consumption. Weighing just 1.24 kg, it's highly portable and features MagSafe charging, two Thunderbolt ports, and a headphone jack. The all-aluminum build ensures durability, but the price is higher than the M1 model. What are buyers saying on Amazon? Buyers call the MacBook Air a masterpiece with vibrant display, sleek design, and smooth multitasking. Some report charger issues despite strong battery performance. Why consider this product? It offers a premium feel, stunning display, seamless performance, and excellent portability—ideal for users seeking style and power in one device. The HP 15 offers a large 15.6-inch FHD display and is powered by the AMD Ryzen 3 7320U processor, making it suitable for students and office users. With 8GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, it ensures smooth multitasking and fast boot times. The laptop includes a backlit keyboard and a robust selection of ports. Its lightweight, eco-friendly design and Wi-Fi 6 support add to its appeal. However, the display's brightness is average, and the build is primarily plastic, which may not feel as premium. What are buyers saying on Amazon? Buyers find the laptop fast and great for daily use, with a quality display and compact design. Some report keyboard, touchpad, and battery issues. Why consider this product? It's a lightweight, value-for-money choice for everyday tasks, with fast performance and a backlit keyboard—ideal if occasional hardware quirks aren't a dealbreaker. The Acer Aspire 3 is a budget-friendly slim laptop with a 15.6-inch HD display and Intel Celeron N4500 processor. It's designed for basic tasks like browsing and office work, featuring 8GB RAM and a 512GB SSD for quick boot times. The BlueLightShield technology reduces eye strain during long sessions. Weighing 1.5 kg, it's portable and offers multiple USB ports for connectivity. However, the HD display resolution is low, and the Celeron processor limits performance for demanding applications. What are buyers saying on Amazon? Buyers appreciate the display and pricing, but report mixed build quality, slow performance, display issues, short battery life, poor sound, and overheating. Why consider this product? It's budget-friendly with a good screen, making it suitable for light use, though concerns around performance and reliability may deter demanding users. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 is a compact 14-inch laptop powered by a 12th Gen Intel Core i5-12450H, offering robust performance for productivity and multitasking. With 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, it's well-equipped for demanding workloads. The anti-glare FHD display and TUV Low Blue Light certification enhance comfort. Its ultra-thin profile and lightweight build make it highly portable. The RAM is soldered and not upgradable, and the display brightness is modest at 250 nits. What are buyers saying on Amazon? Buyers find it great for office work, with good speed and portability. However, display, battery life, and sound quality receive mixed to negative feedback. Why consider this product? A solid choice for basic office tasks, but limited battery life, weak audio, and display concerns may affect overall value. The HP Pavilion x360 is a versatile 2-in-1 laptop with a 14-inch FHD touchscreen, powered by a 13th Gen Intel Core i5-1355U. It features 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, making it suitable for multitasking and creative tasks. The convertible design allows for tablet mode, enhancing flexibility. It includes a 5MP webcam, Wi-Fi 6, and a backlit keyboard. However, it's slightly heavier than some rivals, and battery life can vary with intensive use. What are buyers saying on Amazon? Buyers praise the build quality, performance, and battery life. However, they criticise the audio quality and note heating issues during use. Why consider this product? A good-value laptop with solid performance, but be mindful of poor sound output and potential heating during extended usage. The ASUS Vivobook 15 is a slim 15.6-inch laptop powered by a 13th Gen Intel Core i5-13420H, offering solid performance for everyday tasks. It comes with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, ensuring smooth multitasking and fast storage. The FHD anti-glare display and backlit keyboard add to its usability. With a weight of 1.7 kg, it's portable for its size and includes a good selection of ports. However, the display brightness is average, and the build is mostly plastic. What are buyers saying on Amazon? Buyers appreciate the notebook's solid build and reliable performance, with one noting it performs exactly as advertised. Why consider this product? A dependable choice with good build and consistent performance, ideal for everyday computing needs. The Lenovo V15 is a thin and light 15.6-inch laptop featuring an AMD Ryzen 3 7320U processor, 8GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD. It's designed for business and student users, offering reliable performance for productivity tasks. The FHD antiglare display and Dolby Audio speakers enhance the multimedia experience. It's lightweight at 1.63 kg and includes multiple connectivity options. The display brightness is limited to 250 nits, and the webcam is only 720p. What are buyers saying on Amazon? Buyers like the laptop's build, speed, and overall value. However, they criticise its short 4-hour battery life and subpar display quality. Why consider this product? Good performance and value, but be mindful of limited battery life and an underwhelming display. The ASUS Vivobook 16X is a creator/gaming slim laptop with a large 16-inch FHD+ display and 144Hz refresh rate. Powered by a 12th Gen Intel Core i5-12500H and NVIDIA RTX 2050 GPU, it handles creative workloads and light gaming. With 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, it's ready for multitasking. Weighing 1.67 kg, it's relatively light for a 16-inch device. The display is immersive, but battery life may be average due to the powerful hardware. What are buyers saying on Amazon? Buyers say the laptop is good quality, ideal for students and video editing, with commendable sound quality and overall value for money. Why consider this product? Reliable choice for students and content work, with solid audio and good value. The ASUS Vivobook Go 14 is a thin and light 14-inch laptop powered by AMD Ryzen 3 7320U, making it suitable for students and professionals needing portability. It features 8GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, ensuring smooth performance for daily tasks. The FHD display and anti-glare coating provide comfortable viewing. At just 1.38 kg, it's easy to carry, and the battery life is decent for its class. However, the build is basic, and it lacks a backlit keyboard. What are buyers saying on Amazon? Buyers find it a good budget laptop that functions well, but many criticise the display quality as extremely poor. Why consider this product? Affordable and functional, but display quality may be a significant drawback. Performance: Look for a processor and RAM combination that suits your workload, whether it is light browsing or intensive multitasking. Battery Life: A slim laptop should offer all-day battery support, especially if you are often on the move. Build Quality: Portability should not come at the cost of durability. Choose a laptop with a sturdy yet lightweight chassis. Display: Opt for a sharp, bright screen with good colour accuracy, especially if you work with visuals. Ports and Connectivity: Ensure it has the ports you need, including USB-C, audio jack and fast Wi-Fi support. Yes, many slim laptops now come equipped with high-performance processors, ample RAM and fast SSDs. They can handle demanding tasks like photo editing, coding and multitasking, though for heavy video rendering or gaming, a larger laptop with a dedicated GPU may still be better. Most slim laptops are designed with energy efficiency in mind, offering between 8 to 15 hours of battery life depending on usage. However, battery performance can vary by brand and model, so it's important to check real-world reviews rather than just listed estimates. Slim laptops may sacrifice certain features like extensive port selection, dedicated graphics or upgradeable components to stay compact. While great for portability, they might not be ideal for users who require high-end gaming, large-scale data storage or hardware customisation. Slim laptops Thickness (mm) Display Size/Type RAM/Storage Apple MacBook Air M1 16.1 13.3" Retina 8GB/256GB SSD Apple MacBook Air M2 (2022) 11.3 13.6" Liquid Retina 8GB/256GB SSD HP 15 Ryzen 3 7320U 17.9 15.6" FHD 8GB/512GB SSD Acer Aspire 3 Celeron N4500 19.9 15.6" HD 8GB/512GB SSD Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 i5-12450H 17.9 14" FHD 16GB/512GB SSD HP Pavilion x360 i5-1355U 18.6 14" FHD Touch 16GB/512GB SSD ASUS Vivobook 15 i5-13420H 19.9 15.6" FHD 16GB/512GB SSD Lenovo V15 Ryzen 3 7320U 19.9 15.6" FHD 8GB/512GB SSD ASUS Vivobook 16X i5-12500H 19.9 16" FHD+ 144Hz 16GB/512GB SSD ASUS Vivobook Go 14 Ryzen 3 17.9 14" FHD 8GB/512GB SSD Disclaimer: Mint has an affiliate marketing partnership, which means we may get some commission on purchases you make through the retailer sites links provided. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, which is free from any bias or marketing pitch. We strive to provide accurate and unbiased information to help you make informed decisions. We recommend verifying details with the retailer before making a purchase.
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Fresh AI Euphoria Boosts AMD Stock Momentum
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) may no longer be categorized as a traditional value investment; however, it remains a compelling high-growth opportunity within the AI sector, with strong return potential over the next year. Moreover, demand for AI products is mushrooming across all industries and geographies as companies seek to leverage AI to enhance their operations. As a supplier of AI-driven technology, AMD is well-positioned to capitalize on the growing demand. Confident Investing Starts Here: As a confident shareholder, I have set a 12-month price target of approximately $175, representing an estimated 30% upside. However, Wall Street analysts are not quite as bullish despite the stock's 19% climb year-to-date. Should a $175 target be achieved, I intend to strategically reduce my position and reallocate capital toward attractively valued equities with longer-term growth prospects. From a macroeconomic standpoint, several supportive factors continue to strengthen the bullish outlook for AMD. AMD's Rapid Return Resurgence Has Begun AMD is now trading above the 50-week moving average, with the 14-week Relative Strength Index (RSI) at 65. This indicates that the stock is being driven by the bulls again, and it warrants more cautious buying behavior despite a strong return horizon ahead. Investors who are ahead of the game would have bought this stock earlier in the year. Bullish sentiment for AMD stock is understandable. AMD's forward non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) growth rate is nearly 30%, compared to just 10% for the sector. Also, the trailing 12-month non-GAAP price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is 37, compared to 23 for the industry. That indicates a stark difference in growth and a very fair valuation compared to the broader industry. This robust growth is primarily fueled by accelerating demand in the artificial intelligence sector, where AMD plays a key role through its involvement in data center infrastructure, particularly with its graphics and central processing units. Management has identified 2026 as a pivotal year for profit realization, following years of strong AI-related revenue expansion. While much of this anticipated growth may now be reflected in the stock's valuation, shares do not appear overvalued, making AMD an attractive candidate for a long-term buy-and-hold strategy with the potential for sustained AI-driven returns. Subtle and Stark Macro Factors Influence AMD's Returns A key near-term catalyst for AMD's continued growth is the potential for interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. However, I recognize that an overly aggressive easing cycle could contribute to broader market overvaluation in 2026. Should a significant bull market materialize next year—as I believe is likely—I plan to actively manage my exposure by trimming positions. I may also consider entirely exiting my AMD holdings if the stock appears to have fully priced in several years of anticipated growth. Furthermore, China remains a significant risk. While I'm confident that U.S. diplomacy will prevail over escalations in trade tensions or hot wars evolving, any conflict in Taiwan could disrupt AMD's return horizon (and that of every tech stock) for some time. That's why a cash position to protect from geopolitically induced volatility is so important right now. As TipRanks data shows, AMD's cash position is robust with ~$3 billion in operating cash flo w and ~$2 billion in free cash. However, management has also been making the business more resilient, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM) is diversifying aggressively into the U.S. to mitigate the risk of being threatened by China. That significantly enhances AMD's supply chain security. Hopefully, China will play a diplomatic role. We have AMD's diversification into the EU to look forward to in the near term, as well as burgeoning opportunities in the Middle East with a new $10 billion arrangement with Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN. Looking longer-term, the Global South appears to be a promising growth climate, with India likely taking center stage. Is AMD a Buy, Hold, or Sell? On Wall Street, AMD stock has a consensus Moderate Buy rating based on 24 Buys, 10 Holds, and zero Sell ratings. AMD's average stock price target is $132.17, indicating an 8% downside potential over the next 12 months. Given the macroeconomic factors and the strong demand for AI, I don't think this is the end of AMD's near-term, elite return horizon. The company has also been buying back stock aggressively, with $2.24 billion worth repurchased in the last 12 months; this significantly improves shareholder value and shows management's conscientiousness. At the same time, $2.44 billion in total debt was issued over the same period, suggesting that management is likely trying to boost short-term sentiment to improve stock returns. That's a clever strategy, if you ask me. AMD Stock Still Has Room to Run When a stock transitions from being undervalued to fairly valued, the instinct may be to exit the position. However, as Charlie Munger—one of the most respected investors of our time—has noted, even modest overvaluation is not necessarily a reason to sell shares of an exceptional company. Long-term success often comes from weathering volatility while remaining focused on the broader upward trajectory. This perspective applies well to AMD. The AI boom continues to gain momentum, and AMD remains a central player in this transformative shift. A 12-month price target of $175 appears not only reasonable but also aligned with what could be considered fair value based on the company's medium-term growth outlook.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Did Nvidia Just Say "Checkmate" to AMD?
Industry research suggests that Nvidia gained meaningful market share in the AI accelerator market during the first quarter. While AMD has introduced a series of competing chipsets to those offered by Nvidia, the company reportedly lost market share last quarter. While AMD has new chipsets scheduled for release later this year, so too does Nvidia -- potentially making it even harder for AMD to catch its rival in the chip realm. 10 stocks we like better than Nvidia › Over the last two years, semiconductor powerhouse Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has emerged as the biggest force fueling the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. The company's industry-leading graphics processing units (GPU) and CUDA software platform have helped Nvidia build a substantial lead over its competition in the chip market. While Advanced Micro Devices has carved out an impressive pocket for itself in the AI data center landscape, recent reporting suggests that the company is still far behind Nvidia. Let's explore the dynamics behind Nvidia's lead over AMD, and assess if the king of the chip realm just made its checkmate move against its top rival. During the early phases of the AI megatrend, Nvidia benefited from having a first-mover advantage over other semiconductor companies when it comes to GPUs specifically. While being a first mover can help companies experience outsized growth relative to the competition or form strategic partnerships with leaders in adjacent industries, there's no guarantee that these businesses can sustain their leads. In the case of Nvidia, however, trends suggest that company's lead over AMD may only be getting bigger. Beth Kindig, who serves as a technology research analyst and CEO of I/O Fund, recently shared a data point from SemiAnalysis that pointed out that Nvidia's market share in AI accelerators increased by roughly two points during the first quarter -- now hovering around 88%. By contrast, AMD's share shrunk by about one point, now comprising roughly 4% of the market. The chart illustrates AMD's revenue and operating income by reportable segment during the first quarter. One of the more notable takeaways is that AMD's data center operation is its fastest-growing business, all while remaining highly profitable. However, a more subtle idea is that sales from the data center business shrunk by 5% quarter over quarter. To be fair, there could be a number of reasons for this. First, the semiconductor industry is cyclical -- which makes quarterly trends tougher to predict and gauge when it comes to the overall health of the business. In addition, AMD's latest accelerator architectures are expected to ship later this year. This timeline could be playing a role in the slight deceleration of the data center business compared to the fourth quarter. While these ideas may make some sense in theory, I find them hard to believe, given Nvidia actually gained ground in the AI accelerator market during the first quarter. Since AI developers raced to buy Nvidia's newest Blackwell chips, factors such as cyclicality or new competitive chipsets from AMD didn't seem to be enough to persuade customers from waiting on AMD's products over those of Nvidia. In the long run, these dynamics could spell trouble for AMD. Despite the company's ability to win impressive data center customers such as Oracle, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft, AMD's innovative efforts do not appear to be enough to outmaneuver Nvidia at this time. As of this writing (June 25), shares of AMD have risen by 18% so far in 2025. Per the chart, these gains are slightly ahead of Nvidia stock's increase. I think it's hard to justify AMD's gains over Nvidia, given the company's lack of market share and apparent decelerating growth (at least for now). While I suspect AMD's growth profile could turn around following the release of new chipsets during the second half of the year, I also think it will be challenging for the company to gain any meaningful momentum back from Nvidia -- as Nvidia also has new architectures releasing later this year, too. To me, Nvidia may have put AMD in a checkmate position for the time being. I think these figures reported could imply that Nvidia will remain the leader in AI data center chips and could be on its way to a new, prolonged, and sustained wave of growth. Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $704,676!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $950,198!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 175% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 23, 2025 Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Adam Spatacco has positions in Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Oracle. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Did Nvidia Just Say "Checkmate" to AMD? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
9 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
AMD Keeps Building Momentum In AI, With Plenty Of Work Still To Do
At the AMD Advancing AI event, CEO Lisa Su touted the company's AI compute portfolio. At the AMD Advancing AI event in San Jose earlier this month, CEO Lisa Su and her staff showcased the company's progress across many different facets of AI. They had plenty to announce in both hardware and software, including significant performance gains for GPUs, ongoing advances in the ROCm development platform and the forthcoming introduction of rack-scale infrastructure. There were also many references to trust and strong relationships with customers and partners, which I liked, and a lot of emphasis on open hardware and an open development ecosystem, which I think is less of a clear winner for AMD, as I'll explain later. Overall, I think the event was important for showing how AMD is moving the ball down the field for customers and developers. Under Su, AMD's M.O. is to have clear, ambitious plans and execute against them. Her 'say/do' ratio is high. The company does what it says it will do. This is exactly what it must continue doing to whittle away at Nvidia's dominance in the datacenter AI GPU market. What I saw at the Advancing AI event raised my confidence from last year — although there are a few gaps that need to be addressed. (Note: AMD is an advisory client of my firm, Moor Insights & Strategy.) AMD's AI Market Opportunity And Full-Stack Strategy When she took the stage, Su established the context for AMD's announcements by describing the staggering growth that is the backdrop for today's AI chip market. Just take a look at the chart below. So far, AMD's bullish projections for the growth of the AI chip market have turned out to be ... More accurate. So this segment of the chip industry is looking at a TAM of half a trillion dollars by 2028, with the whole AI accelerator market increasing at a 60% CAGR. The AI inference sub-segment — where AMD competes on better footing with Nvidia — is enjoying an 80% CAGR. People thought that the market numbers AMD cited last year were too high, but not so. This is the world we're living in. For the record, I never doubted the TAM numbers last year. AMD is carving out a bigger place in this world for itself. As Su pointed out, its Instinct GPUs are used by seven of the 10 largest AI companies, and they drive AI for Microsoft Office, Facebook, Zoom, Netflix, Uber, Salesforce and SAP. Its EPYC server CPUs continue to put up record market share (40% last quarter), and it has built out a full stack — partly through smart acquisitions — to support its AI ambitions. I would point in particular to the ZT Systems acquisition and the introduction of the Pensando DPU and the Pollara NIC. GPUs are at the heart of datacenter AI, and AMD's new MI350 series was in the spotlight at this event. Although these chips were slated to ship in Q3, Su said that production shipments had in fact started earlier in June, with partners on track to launch platforms and public cloud instances in Q3. There were cheers from the crowd when they heard that the MI350 delivers a 4x performance improvement over the prior generation. AMD says that its high-end MI355X GPU outperforms the Nvidia B200 to the tune of 1.6x memory, 2.2x compute throughput and 40% more tokens per dollar. (Testing by my company Signal65 showed that the MI355X running DeepSeek-R1 produced up to 1.5x higher throughput than the B200.) To put it in a different perspective, a single MI355X can run a 520-billion-parameter model. And I wasn't surprised when Su and others onstage looked ahead to even better performance — maybe 10x better — projected for the MI400 series and beyond. That puts us into the dreamland of an individual GPU running a trillion-parameter model. By the way, AMD has not forgotten for one second that it is a CPU company. The EPYC Venice processor scheduled to hit the market in 2026 should be better at absolutely everything — 256 high-performance cores, 70% more compute performance than the current generation and so on. EPYC's rapid gains in datacenter market share over the past few years are no accident, and at this point all the company needs to do for CPUs is hold steady on its current up-and-to-the-right trajectory. I am hopeful that Signal65 will get a crack at testing the claims the company made at the event. This level of performance is needed in the era of agentic AI and a landscape of many competing and complementary AI models. Su predicts — and I agree — that there will be hundreds of thousands of specialized AI models in the coming years. This is specifically true for enterprises that will have smaller models focused on areas like CRM, ERP, SCM, HCM, legal, finance and so on. To support this, AMD talked at the event about its plan to sustain an annual cadence of Instinct accelerators, adding a new generation every year. Easy to say, hard to do — though, again, AMD has a high say/do ratio these days. AMD's 2026 Rack-Scale Platform And Current Software Advances On the hardware side, the biggest announcement was the forthcoming Helios rack-scale GPU product that AMD plans to deliver in 2026. This is a big deal, and I want to emphasize how difficult it is to bring together high-performing CPUs (EPYC Venice), GPUs (MI400) and networking chips (next-gen Pensando Vulcano NICs) in a liquid-cooled rack. It's also an excellent way to take on Nvidia, which makes a mint off of its own rack-scale offerings for AI. At the event, Su said she believes that Helios will be the new industry standard when it launches next year (and cited a string of specs and performance numbers to back that up). It's good to see AMD provide a roadmap this far out, but it also had to after Nvidia did at the GTC event earlier this year. On the software side, Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president of the Artificial Intelligence Group at AMD, started off by announcing the arrival of ROCm 7, the latest version of the company's open source software platform for GPUs. Again, big improvements come with each generation — in this case, a 3.5x gain in inference performance compared to ROCm 6. Boppana stressed the very high cadence of updates for AMD software, with new features being released every two weeks. He also talked about the benefits of distributed inference, which allows the two steps of inference to be tasked to separate GPU pools, further speeding up the process. Finally, he announced — to a chorus of cheers — the AMD Developer Cloud, which makes AMD GPUs accessible from anywhere so developers can use them to test-drive their ideas. Last year, Meta had kind things to say about ROCm, and I was impressed because Meta is the hardest 'grader' next to Microsoft. This year, I heard companies talking about both training and inference, and again I'm impressed. (More on that below.) It was also great getting some time with Anush Elangovan, vice president for AI software at AMD, for a video I shot with him. Elangovan is very hardcore, which is exactly what AMD needs. Real grinders. Nightly code drops. What's Working Well For AMD in AI So that's (most of) what was new at AMD Advancing AI. In the next three sections, I want to talk about the good, the needs-improvement and the yet-to-be-determined aspects of what I heard during the event. Let's start with the good things that jumped out at me. What Didn't Work For Me At Advancing AI While overall I thought Advancing AI was a win for AMD, there were two areas where I thought the company missed the mark — one by omission, one by commission. The Jury Is Out On Some Elements Of AMD's AI Strategy In some areas, I suspect that AMD is doing okay or will be doing okay soon — but I'm just not sure. I can't imagine that any of the following items has completely escaped AMD's attention, but I would recommend that the company address them candidly so that customers know what to expect and can maintain high confidence in what AMD is delivering. What Comes Next In AMD's AI Development It is very difficult to engineer cutting-edge semiconductors — let alone rack-scale systems and all the attendant software — on the steady cadence that AMD is maintaining. So kudos to Su and everyone else at the company who's making that happen. But my confidence (and Wall Street's) would rise if AMD provided more granularity about what it's doing, starting with datacenter GPU forecasts. Clearly, AMD doesn't need to compete with Nvidia on every single thing to be successful. But it would be well served to fill in some of the gaps in its story to better speak to the comprehensive ecosystem it's creating. Having spent plenty of time working inside companies on both the OEM and semiconductor sides, I do understand the difficulties AMD faces in providing that kind of clarity. The process of landing design wins can be lumpy, and a few of the non-AMD speakers at Advancing AI mentioned that the company is engaged in the 'bake-offs' that are inevitable in that process. Meanwhile, we're left to wonder what might be holding things back, other than AMD's institutional conservatism — the healthy reticence of engineers not to make any claims until they're sure of the win. That said, with Nvidia's B200s sold out for the next year, you'd think that AMD should be able to sell every wafer it makes, right? So are AMD's yields not good enough yet? Or are hyperscalers having their own problems scaling and deploying? Is there some other gating item? I'd love to know. Please don't take any of my questions the wrong way, because AMD is doing some amazing things, and I walked away from the Advancing AI event impressed with the company's progress. At the show, Su was forthright about describing the pace of this AI revolution we're living in — 'unlike anything we've seen in modern computing, anything we've seen in our careers, and frankly, anything we've seen in our lifetime.' I'll keep looking for answers to my nagging questions, and I'm eager to see how the competition between AMD and Nvidia plays out over the next two years and beyond. Meanwhile, AMD moved down the field at its event, and I look forward to seeing where it is headed.
Digital Trends
11 hours ago
- Business
- Digital Trends
This Dell Pro 14 business laptop just dropped below $1,000
If you are on the hunt for a business laptop, you should jump at this chance to buy the Dell Pro 14 with a discount. This configuration featuring the AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 230 processor is originally sold for $1,039, but it's on sale for $899 following a $140 discount from the laptop deals at Dell itself. It's a powerful machine that will surely boost your productivity, and if you want to get it for a lower price than usual, we highly recommend proceeding with your purchase today as tomorrow may already be too late to pocket the savings. Why you should buy the Dell Pro 14 laptop A business laptop should be efficient and dependable, and the Dell Pro 14 passes those requirements with flying colors. Its AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 230 processor combines with AMD Radeon 760M graphics and 16GB of RAM, which places it on the level of top-tier machines, according to our guide on how much RAM do you need. With these specifications, the laptop is capable of maximizing its built-in AI capabilities, including Microsoft's Copilot as part of Windows 11 Pro. The Dell Pro 14 is pretty portable with its 14-inch screen, and its Full HD+ resolution provides sharp details and vivid colors to make up for the relatively smaller display compared to its peers. The laptop also comes with a 512GB SSD, which should provide plenty of storage space for your apps and files, and a Full HD HDR+ infrared camera that enables facial recognition for additional security to prevent unauthorized access to your Dell Pro 14. This configuration of the Dell Pro 14 featuring the AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 230 processor already provides amazing value at its sticker price of $1,039, so Dell's $140 discount that drops its price to $899 nudges it into must-buy territory. We're not sure how much time is remaining before the offer expires though, so if you're interested in the Dell Pro 14 as your next business laptop, you should complete your transaction for it immediately to make sure you're able get it for below $1,000.
