Intel has made the decision to remove the AVX-512 instruction set from laptop and mobile platforms due to compatibility issues with their E-core designs. The last generation to partially support AVX-512 was Alder Lake, with P-cores agreeing to cooperate, although with reduced efficiency. Intel has chosen to disable AVX-512 support in production starting from early 2022. In response, AMD has taken up the task of integrating AVX-512 into their Zen 4 CPU architecture. Currently, the Ryzen 7040 series is the only mobile platform that offers AVX-512 support. Phoronix conducted a benchmark test comparing the performance of a Ryzen 7 7840U against older Intel i7-1165G7 (Tiger Lake) and i7-1065G7 (Ice Lake) SoCs in AVX-512-based workloads.
The results of Phoronix's test showed that AMD's debut with AVX-512 was surprisingly impressive. The Ryzen 7 7840U outperformed the 1165G7 by 46% and the 1065G7 by an impressive 63%. The Ryzen 7 APU achieved the highest performance gain with AVX-512 enabled, with a 54% margin compared to operating with AVX-512 disabled. In comparison, the impact on the i7-1165G7 Tiger Lake was 34% and on the i7-1065G7 Ice Lake SoC was 35%, during the generation when AVX-512 became common on Intel laptops.
Phoronix concluded that the usage of AVX-512 across the AMD Zen 4 product range has been excellent. The efficient AVX-512 usage on mobile/laptop processors is beneficial for developers who want to work and test code on their devices, as well as for those using AI/deep learning software for edge computing or related purposes. It is also advantageous for users who enjoy AVX-512 optimized software, such as CPU-based renderers and other creator software packages. For those interested in the collected data for Phoenix/Tiger Lake/Ice Lake, it can be found here with all the individual per-test metrics.
