AMD VP explains why the Ryzen AI Max likely wouldn't exist without Apple

AMD's Ryzen AI Max chips came as a huge surprise at CES 2025. They're basically super-powered versions of the company's Ryzen AI hardware with up to 16 CPU cores and 50 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores, alongside a pool of as much as 128GB integrated RAM. AMD claims the Ryzen AI Max chips will deliver up to 2.6 times faster 3D rendering than Intel's Core Ultra 9 288V, as well as 1.4 times better graphics performance.

Squint a bit, and you might think AMD was taking a bit of inspiration from Apple Silicon, with its powerful CPU cores, graphics and unified memory. But according to VP Joe Macri, AMD was building towards this long before Apple. "We were building APUs [chips combining CPUs and Radeon graphics] while Apple was using discrete GPUs. They were using our discrete GPUs. So I don't credit Apple with coming up with the idea." AMD also had experience stuffing gobs of memory into its Instinct data center GPUs.

Still, Macri gives Apple credit for proving that you don't need discrete graphics to sell people on powerful computers. "Many people in the PC industry said, well, if you want graphics, it's gotta be discrete graphics because otherwise people will think it's bad graphics," he said. "What Apple showed was consumers don't care what's inside the box. They actually care what the what the box looks like. They care about the screen, the keyboard, 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 developing the Ryzen AI Max. "I always knew, because we were building APUs, and I'd been pushing for this big APU forever, that I could build, a system that was smaller, faster, and I could give much higher performance at 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 in 1080p at well above 60fps, with tons of graphical flourishes. It was tough to tell on such a small tablet screen, but the overall performance looked on par with a base PlayStation 5 (albeit at a slightly lower resolution). AMD claims the Ryzen AI Max is also comparable to Apple's 14-core M4 Pro chip (which it also beats out in the Vray benchmark).

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

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