Sony and AMD Unveil Next-Gen GPU Technologies for PlayStation 6

Sony and AMD tease likely PlayStation 6 GPU upgrades -- Radiance Cores and a new interconnect for boosting AI rendering performance

Sony is finally spilling the beans on some of the hardware upgrades it will be bringing to its next-generation console. AMD's senior VP and general manager of computing and graphics at AMD, Jack Huynh, and Sony's PS5 Lead Architect, Mark Cerny, published a collaborative video discussing new technologies that are being worked on as part of their collaboration, Project Amethyst. Some of these technologies include massive upgrades to AI rendering and ray tracing performance. The new hardware is likely to be part of the PlayStation 6, or possibly a handheld option. Most of the nine-minute video discussed two new technologies that the two companies are working on together: Neural Arrays and Radiance Cores. Neural Arrays represent an optimization toward the AI-accelerators housed in each compute unit of AMD's modern RDNA architectures, which will network all of the CUs together. This feature will reportedly allow a GPU to process a "large chunk of the screen in one go". The duo didn't go into significant detail about the new technology, but on the surface, Neural Arrays appears to be an "Infinity Fabric" style interconnect that will connect every single compute unit together and allow each compute unit to talk to each other directly without spilling out to cache. One interesting tidbit is that this feature appears to be targeted exclusively toward improving AI-rendering performance, despite the fact that Neural Arrays apparently connects the entirety of each compute unit together (not just the AI portions of the CU). Radiance Cores represent a new dedicated hardware block on a GPU that will reportedly speed up ray-traced rendering significantly and make real-time path-tracing possible. Radiance Cores takes the ray transversal part of the ray tracing pipeline and takes full control of it, processing it independently of the shader cores to speed up rendering time. Memory compression is also getting a big upgrade; AMD and Sony are moving to a new technology called Universal Compression that allows all data types to be compressed "whenever possible". This is a big change from the PS5 series' outgoing compression implementation (Delta Color Compression), which can allegedly only compress certain data elements, including textures and render targets. The introduction of these technologies, particularly Neural Arrays and Radiance Cores, shows that the next-generation Sony console (probably the PS6) will be designed to play ray-traced and path-traced games with equivalent performance to PC graphics card hardware that we have today. Cerny and Huynh also all but confirmed that the next-gen console will take full advantage of FSR Redstone and its suite of machine learning features. The PS5 and PS5 Pro technically have ray-tracing capabilities, but they are noticeably worse than what Nvidia or even AMD's latest GPUs are capable of (especially relating to the vanilla PS5). If you haven't caught on by now, Project Amethyst is the codename for Sony's next-generation console, which will likely be the PS6, but it could potentially include a handheld counterpart as well, as some outlets have speculated. Arguably, the best part is that we can expect all of these technologies to make their way into future AMD graphics cards. Jack Huynh confirmed that the Universal Compression tech will be coming to future AMD SoCs and GPUs. Mark Cerny has also played a role in developing RDNA 5, so it is almost inevitable that Radiance Cores and Neural Arrays will be debuting in AMD's next-generation gaming GPU architecture. Cerny also took a brief moment to tease the timeline of Project Amethyst, noting that these technologies will come to a "future console in a few years' time".

Sony's PlayStation 6 Aims for a Graphics Leap With New Architecture Strategy

When he's not battling bugs and robots in Helldivers 2, Michael is reporting on AI, satellites, cybersecurity, PCs, and tech policy. We're still years away from the PlayStation 6, but Sony says the next-gen console will feature not only a traditional CPU and GPU, but also re-architected hardware to further enhance the graphics with AI and reduce processing bottlenecks. The company revealed the details in a surprise video on Thursday about its work with AMD on Amethyst, a project aimed at harnessing AI approaches to enhance gaming graphics. "Overall, it's still very early days for these technologies; they only exist in simulation right now, but the results are quite promising," Sony's head of PlayStation architecture, Mark Cerny, said in the clip. "And I'm really excited about bringing them to a future console in a few years' time." AMD's general manager for computing graphics, Jack Huynh, said project Amethyst is poised to deliver "gaming breakthroughs." But it will require a new approach to offer "real-time physics, cinematic lighting, [and] efficient asset streaming" for next-generation games. "Trying to brute-force that with raw power alone just doesn't scale," Huynh said. "That's why we're combining traditional rasterization with neural acceleration," or what AMD describes as a collection of machine-learning technologies that can further increase a game's frame rates while maintaining the high resolution and quality visuals. AMD has already been offering the AI gaming boost technologies through FidelityFX Super Resolution, also known as FSR, which has been available on the company's Radeon GPUs for PCs. In addition, FSR 4 is coming to the PlayStation Pro next year, replacing the existing PSSR AI upscaling tech. But gamers can expect even more powerful versions in the coming years, thanks to Amethyst. In the video, Cerny said the challenge with FSR and PSSR is that both "are incredibly demanding on the GPU. They're both computationally expensive and require speedy access to large amounts of memory." In response, AMD and Sony are working on a new GPU architecture involving "Neural Arrays" that promises to further streamline the compute units (CUs) so they can "share data and process things together like a single, focused AI engine," Huynh said. "Now we're not linking the entire GPU into one mega unit. That'd be a cable management nightmare," he added. "But we are connecting CUs within each shader engine in a smart, efficient way. And that changes the game for neural rendering. Bigger ML [machine learning] models, less overhead, more efficiency, and way more scalability as workloads grow." Cerny also said, "neural arrays will allow us to process a large chunk of the screen in one go, and the efficiencies that come from that are going to be a game changer as we begin to develop the next-generation of upscaling and de-noising technologies together." The other notable advancement involves ray tracing, which adds realistic lighting and shadow effects to games. AMD and Sony have also been working on a more efficient approach that involves a dedicated hardware block called "Radiance Cores," which have been designed for "unified light transport," Huynh said. "Radiance Cores take full control of ray traversal, one of the most compute-heavy parts of the process, and that frees up the CPU for geometry and simulation and lets the GPU focus on what it does best: shading and lighting," he added. "The result? A cleaner, faster, and more efficient pipeline built for the next generation of ray-traced games." The final enhancement mentioned is called "Universal Compression," which has been designed to evaluate all data headed to the console's memory and compress it whenever possible, thus freeing up more memory bandwidth. "That means the GPU can deliver more detail, higher frame rates, and greater efficiency," Huynh said.

Prepare for a flood of PS6 release date speculation as PS5 lead architect Mark Cerny teases new graphics tech powered by AMD that will come to a 'future console in a few years' time'

Mark Cerny, lead architect of PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, has shared new developments from Sony and AMD's Project Amethyst collaboration, and in the process, teased the PlayStation 6. In a new video published by PlayStation, titled 'From Project Amethyst to the Future of Play: AMD and Sony Interactive Entertainment's Shared Vision', Cerny, joined by AMD's Jack Huynh, SVP and GM, Computing and Graphics Group, discussed the technology developments from the collaboration. The goal of Project Amethyst, which was announced last year, is to develop machine learning technology across various devices and further graphical capabilities. However, it was Cerny's comments at the end of the video that caught the most attention, as they provide a hint toward what Sony is working on next regarding its hardware. "Overall, it's of course still very early days for these technologies, they only exist in simulation right now. But the results are quite promising and I'm really excited about bringing them to a future console in a few years' time," Cerny said. Could this mean the PS6 is only a few years away? Cerny's words certainly suggest that Sony is at least currently looking into its next console evolution, and has probably confirmed the existence of the next PlayStation itself, which would likely feature the tech developed with Project Amethyst. Speaking of, Cerny and Huynh also revealed three breakthroughs in the video, including Neural Arrays, Radiance Cores, and Universal Compression. Neural Arrays is a new solution for upscaling tech like Sony's PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) and AMD's FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) to be less demanding on the GPU. "Instead of having a bunch of compute units all working on their own, we've built a way for them to team up, to actually share data and process things together like a single, focused AI engine," Huynh explained. "Neural Arrays will allow us to process a large chunk of the screen in one go, and the efficiencies that comes from that are going to be a game changer as we begin to develop the next generation of upscaling and denoising technologies together," Cerny added. Radiance Cores are also designed to minimize the demand of the GPU when ray tracing is involved, which Huynh said is "a new dedicated hardware block designed for unified light transport" to handle both ray tracing and path tracing in real-time. Finally, Universal Compression is a system that evaluates data that goes into the GPU, "not just textures", compressing it and dramatically reducing memory bandwidth usage. "That means the GPU can deliver more detail, higher frame rates, and greater efficiency," Huynh said. We can't be sure when the next Sony console will arrive, but according to recent leaks, the PS6 is expected to launch in late 2027 to early 2028.

New PlayStation 6 tech all but confirmed by Sony and AMD - and it looks like it'll make its way into other hardware too

Sony and AMD just announced three key technologies that look likely to come to the PlayStation 6 and future AMD graphics cards, with PS5 system architect Mark Cerny and AMD senior vice president Jack Huynh teaming up to deliver the news. The talk is fairly technical, but the three core features - Neural Arrays, Radiance Cores and Universal Compression - look set to make a big impact on future AMD-based hardware and are explained in fairly broad terms that we can summarise here. Let's start with Neural Arrays. In short, this is a new arrangement of the dozens of Compute Units (CUs) that make up a graphics processor like that in the PS5 Pro. Normally each of these CUs work alone on a bite-sized piece of the puzzle, which makes sense for most tasks, but can be inefficient for upscaling techniques like FSR or PSSR. Neural Arrays therefore link multiple CUs together in a "smart, efficient way", like a "single, focused AI engine". The benefit is that this ought to allow for bigger (and therefore higher quality) machine learning models, with less overhead and better scalability. To say it another way, it means that an upscaling algorithm like PSSR ought to run faster at a given quality level, or accomplish more in a given time frame. The same speed-up also applies to denoising algorithms, which are important for ray-traced or path-traced graphics. Huynh also promises that Neural Arrays will allow for new features, including "dedicated innovations that bring cinematic rendering to an entirely new level." Radiance Cores are the second new technology, and they're firmly a hardware change. Essentially, this is a new dedicated hardware block in next-generation AMD graphics processors that's "designed for unified light transport", ie ray tracing and path tracing. In the PC space, Nvidia has long held a ray tracing performance advantage thanks to its RT cores, and it looks like finally AMD is adopting a similar strategy. Just as other dedicated hardware we've seen appear in graphics cards over the years, such as those that deal with media encoding or AI processing, Radiance Cores accomplish their given task faster than doing the same thing on more generic hardware. This speeds up the intensive work of ray traversal - "digging through complex data structures to locate where the millions of rays being cast hit the millions of triangles in the scene geometry". As well as the speed-up from having dedicated hardware, this change also unburdens the CPU and the rest of the GPU - so that they can perform the things they're best suited for, such as simulation and geometry on the CPU and shading and lighting on the GPU. The final bit of tech Sony and AMD announced is called Universal Compression, and thankfully it's a bit easier to explain. In short, it's a system that compresses everything that goes out to GPU memory, rather than just a few data types like textures, as is currently the case on the PS5 and PS5 Pro. Again, this is along similar lines to an existing Nvidia technology, in this case Neural Texture Compression. By adding this compression step, effective GPU memory bandwidth is much higher. That means frame-rates might increase if you're bandwidth-limited, but more importantly it allows for higher-quality assets and reduces power consumption too. This technique has broad positive implications, but it also specifically helps make both Neural Arrays and Radiance Cores more effective. These technologies currently exist only in simulation, according to Cerny, but clearly both parties are confident enough to detail them at this early stage. Huynh also mentions that AMD is aiming to bring the technologies to developers "across every gaming platform", which would follow in the company's general approach of open-sourcing its graphics innovations. It will be fascinating to see how these technologies work when they start to be realised in real hardware, and given the Project Amethyst partnership thus far, it seems reasonable to assume that the two companies will make further announcements over the next few years as the tech gets closer to completion - and when the expected PlayStation 6 is officially announced. Beyond the rumoured PlayStation 6, we could also see these approaches being used in a PlayStation or Windows-based gaming handheld. Power consumption and memory bandwidth limitations are key challenges for any mobile form factor, so no doubt the likes of Valve, Asus and Lenovo would be mighty interested in any significant advancements. Valve has famously said that they're waiting for a "generational leap" to justify a Steam Deck 2, and this might just qualify. Similarly, this is huge news for fans of AMD desktop graphics cards, which have traditionally offered great price to performance in rasterised games and plenty of VRAM, but have fallen behind Nvidia alternatives in terms of RT performance and other features. AMD could massively close the gap here, and that's an exciting prospect. Either way, I'm happy to see Sony and AMD share the fruits of their partnership so openly, and it's certainly food for thought when it comes to seeing how Sony, AMD and other tech giants are looking to circumvent the rise in silicon costs that has prevented faster, cheaper models from arriving this console generation.

Sony just dropped its biggest PS6 news yet and it's all about the GPU | Stuff

The PS6 GPU will push past existing limits to boost upscaling, ray scaling and path tracing. The benefits are tantalising It'll still be "a few years" until Sony releases the PS6, but the company is already spilling the beans about the guts of its next-generation games console. Today, the company is revealing a trio of new, co-developed technologies that will underpin the next-generation AMD graphics cards almost certain to power the PlayStation 6. PS5 system architect (and erstwhile Dana Carvey lookalike) Mark Cerny sat with AMD senior VP Jack Huynh to explain the Neural Arrays, Radiance Cores and Universal Compression tech the companies have developed together. There's a lot of technical terminology within the video, but essentially the pair explain how the raw power approach isn't cutting it anymore and there can be far greater advancements with machine learning (or neural acceleration, as Huynh puts it). Effectively, we're looking at the next generation of the AMD FSR (Fidelity Super Resolution) and PlayStation PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) from the PlayStation 5 Pro technology that'll make the worlds we game in far more realistic and detailed "to get closer to the vision of the artists and creators behind the games." The Neural Arrays tech will see the GPUs compute units team up to become a "single, focused AI engine" to make the graphics chips' workload more efficient and scaleable. There'll be particular benefits for upscaling, ray tracing and denoising technologies Sony and AMD are working on together. Speaking of ray tracing, the Radiance Cores will boost both ray tracing and path tracing capabilities by freeing up GPU components to focus on shaders and textures in real time. Finally, Universal Compression will enable the GPU to deliver "more detail, higher frame rates, and greater efficiency" by compressing everything in the GPUs pipeline. The technologies mentioned are still in the pre-demonstration stage so it's interesting to see Sony and AMD talk so frankly about where this is heading. Overall, though, it makes us incredibly excited for the graphical capabilities of the PS6, whenever that comes around.

PS6 release date speculation soars as PS5 architect Mark Cerny teases "future console" and says "current approach" to lighting and graphics has "reached its limit"

Sony and AMD reveal Project Amethyst tech aimed at next-gen GPU and memory A new tech talk from AMD and Sony has given us a look into the plans for a future PlayStation console - the presumed but unannounced PS6 - as well as AMD's ambitions for next-gen GPUs and machine learning. PS5 and PS5 Pro architect Mark Cerny discusses Project Amethyst, a collaboration between Sony and AMD on "Machine Learning-based technology for graphics and gameplay," with AMD SVP and GM Jack Huynh. The talk focuses on three "gaming technology breakthroughs that will lead to benefits across the gaming industry in the future," but I'll skip to the end a bit first. Cerny says these technologies are "still very early" in development and "only exist in simulation right now," but adds that "the results are quite promising." Here's arguably the most pertinent line in the whole video. "I'm really excited about bringing them to a future console in a few years time," Cerny says of the nascent tech, stopping just short of calling out the PS6 by name, but offering more than enough detail to rekindle PS6 release date speculation, currently centered around 2028. In a previous comment, Cerny specifies that "current GPUs, including the ones in PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 pro" cannot utilize the proposed technologies due to their structure, further hinting at a future console generation. Huynh is quick to say that these technologies will come "to developers across every gaming platform, because this isn't just about silicon," which comes as no surprise given AMD's PC presence. Those technologies can be separated into machine learning and unified GPU architecture, a new "dedicated hardware block" for lighting and ray tracing (or path tracing) dubbed Radiance Cores (which sounds uncannily like a Solar MacGuffin I'd pick up in Destiny 2), and "universal compression" that improves on the DCC (delta color compression) tech used in modern GPUs to conserve memory bandwidth. Wagering that "going forward, more and more of what you see on-screen, the detail, the fidelity, the atmosphere, it will be touched or enhanced" by machine learning, Huynh flags advancements in neural networks already found in upscalers like AMD FSR and the PS5 Pro's PSSR. To overcome inefficiencies in neural networks, Huynh points to "neural arrays," which would allow GPUs to "share data and process things together like a single, focused AI engine" instead of subdividing computation units and problems. "We're not linking the entire GPU into one mega unit," he says, "but we are connecting [computation units] with each shader engine in a smart, efficient way." Neural arrays will lead to "better FSR, better ray regeneration, and brand new [machine learning] power features we're just starting to imagine," Huynh adds. Radiance Cores, meanwhile, seek to address GPU bottlenecks. "The challenge is that the current approach has reached its limit," Cerny says of today's ray tracing and lighting tech. Cerny singles out the shared load of ray tracing and shading work. Huynh, building on AMD's previously announced "Neural Radiance Caching," says Radiance Cores will step in to handle ray traversal (ray tracing and path tracing), which "frees up the CPU for geometry and simulation, and lets the GPU focus on what it does best: shading and lighting." "There's a significant speed boost that comes from putting the traversal logic in hardware," Cerny agrees, "and a further boost that comes from having that hardware operate independently from the shader cores. On top of those performance increases, there are other features in the works, too, such as flexible and efficient data structures for the geometry being ray-traced. "Overall, I'm really looking forward to the time when we can get Radiance Cores into the hands of game creators," he concludes. Finally, universal compression is pitched as a way to check "every piece of data headed to memory, not just textures" and compress it "whenever possible," per Huynh. Where DCC looks at textures and render targets, the proposed UC would evaluate everything, meaning "the GPU can deliver more detail, higher frame rates, and greater efficiency," Huynh says. Cerny ponders "to what degree the effective bandwidth of the GPU will exceed its paper spec" with universal compression implemented. Again, this is all largely in the realm of two tech dudes talking excitedly at a camera, but the proposed technologies and their intersection with the PS6 are noteworthy. The PS6 has been in discussion for some time and has likely been in the works for upwards of four to five years, and folks like Cerny are slowly but steadily helping to visualize it.