AMD hardware on board: Mark Cerny provides an early peek at the PlayStation 6, gameplay to benefit from AI
Sony and AMD are already in an existing collaboration that involves AMD supplying APUs for the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro. Mark Cerny has now unveiled a new partnership between the two companies. This announcement was made in a fairly comprehensive video in which Cerny discussed the development process of a new console, namely the PlayStation 5 Pro. He even shared certain details regarding the console’s architecture, revealing that the PS5 Pro’s APU is essentially based on RDNA 2.x but also borrows technologies from an upcoming RDNA architecture for ray tracing. For machine learning, the PS5 Pro is said to feature a custom RDNA architecture, very likely developed in a close cooperation between AMD and Sony.
The newly announced partnership is called Project Amethyst, a reference to the result of mixing red and blue – AMD’s and Sony’s corporate colours. Sony says the goal of this partnership is to incorporate more AI into video games, for both graphics and gameplay. Meanwhile, the use of AI to enhance graphics quality and performance has pretty much been established by the likes of Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR. Likewise, there is a massive potential in using modern AI implementations or machine learning for gameplay-related aspects. For instance, this could lead to the creation of bot opponents that can learn from a player and exhibit more human-like behaviour, thus demanding greater adaptability from the player.
Whilst Mark Cerny didn’t mention anything specific concerning a successor to the PS5, the announcement strongly suggests that Sony will continue using AMD technology in the PlayStation 6. There were also clear references to future hardware architectures.
