This is a deliberate attempt to give me a headache, isn't it?
AMD's laptop CPU naming schemes are, I can say with some confidence, difficult to parse even for those of us that make it our mission in life to keep track of them. So much so, in fact, that the company has previously resorted to handing out a decoder wheel to help poor hardware writers like myself make sense of various model number changes and code name variations.
Now a product comparison page for Asus laptops may have briefly revealed the naming scheme for the upcoming Strix Point mobile processors, and it's a doozy. First spotted by Twitter user harukaze5719, the page showed Asus' Vivobook S 16 OLED line, each featuring a CPU named (drumroll, please): the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 170. Just rolls off the tongue that one, doesn't it?
However, the page was updated today to show the same laptops instead featuring AMDs previous Hawk Point mobile chips, the also catchily named AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS and AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS. Since then the page appears to have broken for product comparisons, although the Vivobook S 16 laptops are still listed separately featuring the older Hawk Point CPUs.
The originally listed AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 was said to feature a 5.1GHz clock speed, 36MB of cache, 12 cores, 24 threads and "AMD Ryzen AI up to 77 TOPS".
So, what to make of this then? Well, a few options spring to mind. Firstly, this could well have been an accidental reveal of a branding change that resulted in a ticking off from AMD and a quick update to the page. It's also possible AMD planned on changing the naming scheme, reverted its decision later, and forgot to keep Asus in the loop. Or alternatively, an intern at Asus may have become very—and I would say, understandably—confused as to what on earth they were supposed to be listing from AMDs product line.
Working off the presumption that the first may be true, just for a moment, the new naming scheme would likely be a reflection of Intel's Core Ultra line, itself featuring a three digit number after the first half of the branding, ie the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H.
However, if this is the case it seems Intel might have missed a trick in not taking the opportunity to crowbar the term "AI" in there somewhere, as AMD may well be planning here. On the one hand, that would match with the company's recent declarations of 55 years of continued (and somewhat dubious) AI innovation, and on the other would make for a potential naming scheme that crunches horribly in the mouth when read out loud.
What's in a name, eh? In this case a whole lot, it seems, and while it remains to be seen whether AMD does change up its naming scheme once again—and if that were to happen Computex in June would be the most likely time for that to happen—at the very least it would be something of a change from a four digit number variation into something that stands a chance of being quickly parsed without an explainer article, a decoder, and an eventual tension headache that brings us to our knees.
