AMD VP explains why Ryzen AI Max wouldn’t exist without Apple

AMD Ryzen AI Max The chips came as a big surprise at CES 2025. They’re essentially ultra-powerful versions of the company’s Ryzen AI hardware with up to 16 CPU cores and 50 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores, along with up to 128GB of onboard RAM. AMD claims the Ryzen AI Max chipset will deliver up to 2.6 times faster 3D rendering than the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V processor, as well as 1.4 times better graphics performance.

Close your eyes a bit, and you might think AMD was taking a little inspiration from Apple Silicon, thanks to its powerful CPU cores, unified graphics and memory. But according to VP Joe Macri, AMD was working on that goal long before Apple. “We were building APUs (chips that combine CPUs and Radeon graphics) while Apple was using discrete GPUs. They were using our Discrete graphics processing units. “So I don’t give credit to Apple for coming up with this idea.” AMD also has experience stuffing large blocks of memory into its Instinct data center GPUs.

However, Macri gives Apple credit for proving that you don’t need discrete graphics to sell people on powerful computers. “A lot of people in the computer industry said, ‘Well, if you want graphics, it has to be discrete graphics, otherwise people will think it’s bad graphics.’ “What Apple has shown is that consumers don’t care about what’s inside the box. They actually care about what the box looks like. They care about the screen, the keyboard and the mouse. They care about what it does.”

With the success of Apple Silicon, Macri was finally able to get approval to spend a “mind-boggling” amount of money to develop Ryzen AI Max. “I always knew, because we were building APUs, and I had been pushing for this big APU forever, that I could build a smaller, faster system, and I could deliver much higher performance with the same power.” He said.

I briefly saw the Ryzen AI Max in action while testing the latest ASUS ROG Flow Z13 at AMD’s CES booth. I was able to play Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart At 1080p at well above 60fps, with plenty of graphical flourishes. It was hard to tell on such a small tablet screen, but overall performance seemed on par with the base PlayStation 5 (albeit at a slightly lower resolution). AMD claims that the Ryzen AI Max is also comparable to Apple’s 14-core M4 Pro chip (which it also beats in the Vray benchmark).

Ryzen AI Max systems will be released in the first and second quarter of the year, including the aforementioned ROG Flow Z13 as well as HP’s ZBook Ultra G1a.