Is Aya-Neo Slyly Trying To Tell Us Its Next-Gen Gaming Handheld Will Rock AMD's Rembrandt APU?
Aya-Neo has decided to delay the unveiling for its "Next" gaming PC console by a week, moving the date from December 28, 2021 to January 4, 2022. Normally a mere week-long delay would not be notable, but in this case, the timing is potentially everything. Why is that? January 4 just so happens to be the same day AMD is planning a livestream event.
That's also CES week, which officially runs from January 5-8. Even though manufacturers have begun pulling out at a frenetic pace, we can still expect virtual announcements. As for AMD, the company confirmed plans to "highlight innovations and solutions featuring upcoming AMD Ryzen processors and AMD Radeon graphics."
One of those Ryzen announcements could end up being Rembrandt-U, the codename for AMD's Ryzen 6000 series APUs. If past leaks are accurate, Rembrandt will be made up of Zen 3+ CPU cores and RDNA 2 graphics. That's an enticing proposition for a handheld gaming PC, and could go a long way in making Next competitive with Valve's Steam Deck.
Whether that's the direction Aya-Neo goes, we'll have to wait a little longer to find out. We mentioned before that it's probably a long shot, but that was before Aya-Neo pushed back the unveiling "for certain reasons." We still don't know if Next really will feature Rembrandt hardware, but if that's the case, it would have been odd to unveil the handheld before AMD formally introduced the Ryzen 6000 series.
All Aya-Neo has said up to this point is that its Next handheld will feature "next generation AMD cores for gamers." By pushing the unveiling to January 4, Rembrandt becomes a more plausible possibility. There's are still other possibilities though, such as Barcelo-U (Zen 3 and Vega 7) or a custom Van Gogh SoC like the Steam Deck.
In any event, stay tuned!
