{"id":212493,"date":"2025-10-09T19:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T19:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/212493\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T19:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T19:45:07","slug":"sony-and-amd-tease-the-gpu-tech-theyre-building-for-the-next-playstation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/212493\/","title":{"rendered":"Sony and AMD tease the GPU tech they’re building for the next PlayStation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sony just dropped a new video with Mark Cerny, and it\u2019s a big one, with significant implications for the company\u2019s next console and AMD\u2019s future GPUs. Over nearly nine minutes, Cerny, who was the lead designer for the PlayStation 4 and PS5<\/a>, chats with Jack Huynh, senior vice president and general manager of AMD\u2019s Computing and Graphics Group, about a series of technologies, collectively dubbed Project Amethyst, the two companies are developing together. According to Cerny, those technologies \u201conly exist in simulations\u201d right now, but they\u2019re broadly designed to make the next PlayStation better at ray tracing, upscaling and other machine learning-based rendering techniques.<\/p>\n

If you know anything about AMD graphics cards, it\u2019s that they\u2019ve historically offered poor ray tracing performance relative to NVIDIA\u2019s RTX GPUs. For years, AMD tried to bridge the gap with cards that outmuscled NVIDIA\u2019s offerings with better rasterization performance, an approach the company now admits won\u2019t work for modern, graphically intensive games. \u201cTrying to brute force [ray-tracing] with raw power alone just doesn\u2019t scale,\u201d Huynh said. AMD\u2019s solution is an entirely new architecture that combines two hardware innovations: Neural Arrays and Radiance Cores.<\/p>\n

In AMD\u2019s older GPUs, the individual compute units are designed to work independently of one another. This approach worked great for a long time, but in modern games \u2014 dependent as they are on expensive upscaling techniques likes FSR and Sony\u2019s own PSSR<\/a> to deliver playable framerates at high resolutions \u2014 it can lead to inefficiencies. AMD is trying to solve that problem with Neural Arrays, which give the compute units a way to work together and share data between one another.<\/p>\n

According to Huynh, AMD isn\u2019t linking an entire GPU together, as that would create a cable-management nightmare, but it is giving the silicon a way to process a \u201clarge chunk\u201d of the screen in one go. In practice, he says that should allow the next PlayStation and AMD\u2019s future video cards to offer a \u201cwhole new level of machine learning performance.\u201d In turn, that will translate to better and faster upscaling performance, alongside better ray regeneration. The latter is something NVIDIA already offers with DLSS Ray Reconstruction and in games that support the technology, it translates to better-looking ray tracing effects and improved performance.<\/p>\n

As for Radiance Cores, it sound like AMD is taking another page from NVIDIA. For the uninitiated, the company\u2019s RTX cards feature dedicated, fixed-function \u201cRT\u201d cores designed to accelerate the math needed to simulate light rays in real-time. Huynh says the Radiance Cores are an entirely new hardware block designed to handle ray and path tracing. \u201cIt\u2019s a brand-new rendering approach for AMD,\u201d he added. As a bonus, by taking on this work, the Radiance Cores will free up other parts of AMD\u2019s new GPUs to process shaders and textures more quickly, leading to further efficiency gains.<\/p>\n

Lastly, the two companies are working on new software they\u2019re calling Universal Compression. It builds on the PS5 and PS5 Pro\u2019s existing Delta Color Compression technique. It will theoretically allow Sony\u2019s next console to compress everything that goes through its graphics pipeline, reducing the amount memory bandwidth needed by the GPU and potentially reducing its power consumption.<\/p>\n

Again, I\u2019ll note Cerny said it\u2019s still \u201cearly days\u201d for all the technologies he and Huynh discussed, but it\u2019s reassuring to know Sony and AMD are thinking about how to best approach ray tracing performance and upscaling. Techniques like ray-traced global illumination can completely change the look of a game, making for a more immersive experience. If Sony and AMD can find ways to make those technologies less expensive to run, that\u2019s a win for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sony just dropped a new video with Mark Cerny, and it\u2019s a big one, with significant implications for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[120989,120988,1015,105080,1014,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-212493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-jack-huynh","9":"tag-mark-cerny","10":"tag-ps5","11":"tag-ray-tracing","12":"tag-sony","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}