Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is keeping up the pressure on rival Intel Corp. with the launch of new additions to its Zen-based microprocessors.

The company Monday unveiled its second-generation AMD Ryzen Pro mobile processors, alongside its first batch of Athlon Pro mobile chips. Both families of processors also integrate with AMD’s Radeon Vega graphics chips.

AMD said the latest chips are based on its Zen architecture, which deliver 54% better performance per clock cycle than older AMD chips. The new chips are designed to power low-cost laptops and netbooks, which AMD product marketing manager David Tjong said are of critical importance for companies that need to keep their remote workers equipped. He noted that remote workers are increasingly multitasking and taking on more resource-heavy tasks such as graphic design.

The new AMD chips are designed to power those workloads. Top of the line is the new AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 3700U, which comes with four cores and eight threads, runs at 4 gigahertz and packs a Radeon Vega 10 graphics card. Then there’s the AMD Ryzen 5 pro 3500U, which also has four cores and eight threads and clocks in at 3.7GHz in addition to featuring a Radeon Vega 6 graphics card.

The AMD Ryzen 4 Pro 3300U sports four cores and four threads, runs at 3.5 GHz and sports Radeon Vega 6 graphics. Finally there’s the new AMD Athlon Pro 300U, which has two cores and four threads, and runs at 3.3 GHz with Radeon Vega 3 graphics.

Tjong said the new chips not only outperform AMD’s earlier generations, but also surpass the performance of Intel’s rival i7-8650U and i7-7600U chips for low-powered notebooks. The company claims the new chips provide notebooks with up to 12 hours of battery life and offer security features such as full memory encryption and a built-in coprocessor for protecting against “cold boot attacks.”

Companies such as Hewlett-Packard Inc. and Lenovo Group Ltd. will soon offer new laptops based on the chips, AMD said.

Image: AMD