Apple Silicon

AMD's Upcoming Strix Halo Mobile SoC Said To Feature 16 Cores, Improved IO Die and GPU

Based on details posted on Twitter/X by a pair of well known leakers, AMD appears to be working on a pair of different Ryzen 8000-series mobile processors. The previously known Strix Point is said to get up to four Zen 5 cores and eight Zen 5c cores, whereas the Strix Halo is said to get 16 Zen 5 cores, according to @Olrak29_. This is something that was posted by Moore's Law is Dead back in April as well, who claimed the chip will launch sometime at the end of 2024. MLID also suggested that the Strix Halo will feature a 40 CU GPU and a 256-bit LPDDR5X memory interface, making it a very different proposition from your average APU from AMD.

@kopite7kimi chimes in on Twitter to point out that "Strix Halo looks like a desktop Zen 5 with a different IOD." This is definitely something that would be possible for AMD to do and if we look at the MLID information, the Strix Halo processor appears to have something called a Mall Cache, which seems to be something of a catch all cache for the various components inside the chip, such as the AI Engine and the GPU. Time will tell if AMD delivers on Strix Halo or not, but this might be the first notebook processor that can handle gaming at a decent resolution without needing a discrete GPU. Then again, with a rumoured peak TDP of 120 W, this chip is also going to run hotter and draw more power than most mobile processors to date.