AMD’s Latest Naming For Strix Point APUs Is A Revisit To An Early 2000s Tactic

AMD is reportedly switching to yet another naming scheme for its upcoming Strix Point APUs, because the company seemingly can’t decided on which name is the best. According to leaker Golden Pig Upgrade (金猪升级包), the new naming scheme will begin from “Ryzen AI 300” series. Why? Because Intel.

Strix Point Gets A New Name, Again

The “Strix Point” APUs – expected to be the new Zen5-powered laptop processor family – has gone through several names. First, it was Ryzen 8000, but that was debunked when Team Red released a refresh of its Ryzen 7040 series APUs; naturally, Ryzen 9000 is the next best candidate. Then, the AI hype has gotten everyone including AMD’s marketing department, which has later decided to name the upcoming chips as something like “Ryzen AI 9 HX 170“.

However, the chipmaker is seemingly unsatisfied with the naming and decided to pull the classic playbook it has used two decades ago for its desktop Athlon processors: by giving the model names a bigger number over Intel’s counterparts. Golden Pig Upgrade’s Bilibili post wrote:

Strix Point will be renamed again:
Ryzen AI 9 HX 370
Ryzen AI 9 365

Those familiar with the DIY scene will know this move – since (Intel’s) Core Ultra 200 series is about to launched soon, so if AMD restarts its name from 100 it’s going to look disadvantageous from the numbering perspective, hence it starts at 300 Series. If a rhetoric is needed somehow, they can say this is the third generation of chips featuring NPUs.

The same claim was corroborated by a Lenovo Product Manager via Weibo:

Funny AMD, they’re changing the names again (the one everyone saw before). It follows the NPU generation number, everyone wait until the embargo lifts on early June.

If you’re unfamiliar, here’s what happened: two decades ago, the CPU naming was straightforward: the number simply denotes the clock speed. Example – Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz, it’s in the name; but AMD’s Athlon processors at the time decided to use names like “Athlon 1800+” despite its processor not actually reaching this speed, but it was effective at communicating the fact that it is competitive against Intel’s counterparts.

So, to kick off Strix Point models with a number bigger than Intel’s number is likely to convince those who are unfamiliar with CPU names and may believe into the “bigger number equals better” narrative. I don’t blame them – PC component names are notoriously bad for a reason – but it’s certainly an effective tactic against consumers unfamiliar with CPUs. As for nerds and enthusiasts like us, time to teach our friends and families once more when the time to buy a new PC comes, again.

Source: Videocardz

Pokdepinion: Sneaky, AMD.