Lenovo ships new ThinkPads with Microsoft Pluton chip disabled

The Lenovo ThinkPad laptops with AMD Ryzen CPUs announced earlier this month have a Microsoft Pluton chip, but the manufacturer does not enable this by default. Users can do that themselves, the company reports.

All 2022 Lenovo ThinkPad systems include the Pluton chip disabled by default, Lenovo reports to The Register. The company specifically mentions the Z13, Z16, T14, T16, T14s, P16s and X13 with AMD Ryzen 6000 processors. Lenovo announced the laptops at CES early this month. AMD then unveiled its Ryzen 6000 processors for laptops.

These are AMD’s first processors with a Microsoft Pluton chip. This is a processor-integrated security chip for, among other things, the storage of sensitive data such as passwords, but specifically aimed at Windows 11. The presence of the chip does not prevent the installation of Linux and users can disable it with the Ryzen chips.

At least that’s what AMD confirmed to The Register: “AMD respects user choice and, as usual with security technology, offers the option for a user to enable or disable Pluton based on their settings in our reference bios.” Microsoft told the site that it leaves the choice of enabling or not to the manufacturer and that Pluton is also not used for verification of bootloaders.