Mark Cerny triggers PS6 speculation by discussing AMD tech coming to ‘a future console in a few years’ time’
The PlayStation 5 architect was discussing the future of console technology with AMD’s Jack Huynh
PlayStation 5 lead architect Mark Cerny has made a reference to a potential PlayStation 6 in an official discussion video about future tech.
The video, which was posted on the official PlayStation YouTube channel, has Cerny sitting down with the SVP and GM of AMD’s computing and graphics group, Jack Huynh, to discuss the latest developments from the Project Amethyst collaboration.
Project Amethyst is a joint commitment from Sony and AMD to use machine learning based technology for graphics and gameplay, and in the new video the pair discuss three gaming technology breakthroughs that they believe will lead to benefits in the games industry.
It’s Cerny’s comments at the end of the video, however, that will likely garner the most discussion, given their apparent nod to the PlayStation 6.
“Overall, of course, it’s still very early days for these technologies,” Cerny said. “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.”
Should Cerny’s comment indeed be referring to the PS6, it suggests a potential 2028 release window for the console.
The three breakthroughs discussed in the video are Neural Arrays, Radiance Cores and Universal Compression.
Neural Arrays are designed to tackle the problem of upscaling techs like FSR and PSSR creating demands 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 said.
Cerny added: “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 denoising technologies together.”
Radiance Cores are designed to make ray tracing less demanding on GPU by “rethinking the entire path tracing pipeline from hardware to software”, according to Huynh. They’re described as “a new dedicated hardware block designed for unified light transport”, which handles ray tracing and path tracing in real-time.
“Radiance Cores take full control of ray traversal, one of the most compute-heavy parts of the process,” Huynh said. “And that frees up the CPU for geometry and simulation, and lets the GPU focus on what it does best, shading and lighting. The result? A cleaner, faster and more efficient pipeline built for the next generation of ray-traced games.”
The final breakthrough, Universal Compression, are aimed to solve the bottleneck created by GPU memory bandwidth limitations which make it harder to handled 4K textures and ray tracing maps.
Universal Compression, according to Huynh, is “a system that evaluates every piece of data headed to memory – not just textures – and compresses it whenever possible. Only the essential bytes are sent out, which dramatically reduces memory bandwidth usage. That means the GPU can deliver more detail, higher frame rates and greater efficiency.”
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Cerny added: “There’s a multitude of benefits from this, including lower power consumption, higher fidelity assets and perhaps most importantly, the synergies that Universal Compression has with Neural Arrays and Radiance Cores, as we work to deliver the best possible experiences to gamers.”
Implying that this tech may not be exclusive to a theoretical PlayStation 6, Huynh concluded that the plan was “to bring these innovations to developers across every gaming platform, because this isn’t just about silicon, it’s about empowering the creators and communities that make gaming what it is”.
“And we’re just getting started,” he explained. “As we continue building with close partners like Sony, everything we’re doing is focused on one thing – pushing games forward for all of you.”
Xbox announced in June that it had “entered into a strategic, multi-year partnership with AMD to co-engineer silicon across a portfolio of devices, including future first-party consoles and cloud”, suggesting that some of the technology described in Sony’s video may find its way to Microsoft‘s next console too.
