AMD, Innovation and a World Turned Upside Down

This week, Fast Company included AMD as a top-ten innovator in Consumer Electronics on their annual list of the Most Innovative Companies. I’m always inspired reading the stories of companies pushing their industries forward with new and different thinking. It’s gratifying to be among them. I began reflecting on the improvements AMD brings to so many consumer products and experiences -- improvements that served the world well when traditional ways of working, schooling and connecting with friends and family were turned upside down by COVID-19.

As life went virtual last year, the PC became the digital hub of the home, connecting workers to colleagues, children to teachers, and families to loved ones. Performance, efficiency, and cost became even more critical as many of us looked to upgrade our laptops or just make sure we had enough devices available for everyone at home.

AMD couldn’t foresee the events of last year which deepened our reliance on technology like laptop PCs. But because we always work to push the boundaries of performance and efficiency in the products we make, we were ready with AMD Ryzen™ 4000 Series Mobile Processors, built to deliver high performance and long-lasting battery life. Fast Company says these AMD processors launched in early 2020 ‘introduced a jolt of competition’ to the laptop market.

The Ryzen 4000 Series Mobile Processors based on our “Zen 2” core are particularly special for AMD, as they mark the achievement of our goal to deliver a 25x improvement in energy efficiency over our 2014 laptop processors. With smart design and a well-placed bet on the latest process technologies, we exceeded that goal to deliver more than 31x improvement in energy efficiency. This translates to a better experience for the user, energy savings and a smaller environmental footprint.

At AMD, innovation is not about one product, or incremental improvements. It’s about driving disruptive performance with each generation and delivering breakthrough products at a rapid and consistent pace. Since launching our very first “Zen”-based AMD Ryzen processors in 2017, we’ve delivered leadership laptop processors for three consecutive product generations. We did it again just weeks ago at CES in January 2021, with our latest AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series Mobile Processors.

We’ve accomplished much over the last few years. I’m proud of the entire AMD team who bring ingenuity and a passion for high-performance computing to their work every day. AMDers love semiconductors because they are critical building blocks for so many things, meaning our innovation reverberates throughout the technology industry. From the supercomputers that power important research, to cloud and enterprise data centers enabling remote work and services, to the laptop your child uses for virtual classrooms – semiconductors are at the heart of them all.

Like all the Fast Company Most Innovative Companies, AMD is dedicated to setting the pace of innovation for our industry to deliver the performance and experiences that are increasingly essential to our lives.

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