Sony deepens collaboration with AMD for PlayStation PS5 Pro

Sony is broadening its partnership with AMD by infusing AI into PlayStation games to improve their appearance and playability.

PlayStation’s lead architect, Mark Cerny, who first introduced the PS5 Pro in September, announced on Wednesday that the two companies were creating a deeper collaboration to work on “machine learning-based technology for graphics and gameplay.”

Sony wants to improve game graphics

According to an article by The Verge, the two companies already have an existing partnership on the PS5 Pro and PS5 Pro’s GPUs based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture. The article further explains that PS5Pro uses a feature called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) to improve image clarity and frame rates.

The new GPU is a combination of what was already offered on the PS5 with, according to Engadget, some cherry-picked features from the more advanced RDNA3 architecture that AMD introduced in 2022.

That’s paired with ray tracing techniques that Cerny says in a video are from future RDNA tech on AMD’s roadmap and custom machine learning features created for the PS5 pro.

The machine learning components are also reportedly a crucial part of AMD and Sony’s future work together.

In the 37-minute presentation, Cerny explained the technical aspects of the PS5 Pro and other additional information about the “multi-year” project with AMD which is codenamed “Amethyst.”

“And I’m honored to announce that we have begun a deeper collaboration with a focus on machine learning-based technology for graphics and gameplay,” said Cerny.

Although he did not give the finer details about when and where the Project Amethyst tech will be used, it appears like something the market could see on the next PlayStation and other future hardware of which AMD is a part of.

“These components should be key in increasing the richness of game graphics.”

Cerny.

According to Cerny, the two firms have two goals with Project Amethyst.

“The first goal is a more ideal architecture for machine learning,” explained Cerny, adding the second goal is to develop “a set of high-quality CNNs for graphics.”

“Both SIE and AMD will independently have the ability to draw from this collection of network architectures and training strategies, and these components should be key in increasing the richness of game graphics as well as enabling more extensive use of ray tracing and path tracing,” added Cerny.

The technology should extend beyond PlayStation

The collaboration between them is a culmination of the companies’ desire to push gaming tech even further. Additionally, the collaboration is expected to improve on what PlayStation has already accomplished with SP5 Pro, with their results starting to show with future console iterations like the inevitable PS6.

Cerny explained that both Sony and AMD do not want the technology to be exclusive to PlayStation but to be used “broadly across PC and console cloud.”

“Through this technology collaboration we’re looking to support broad work and machine learning across a variety of devices,” said Cerny.

In the video, Cerny further discussed three specific areas and their future potential growth – rasterized rendering, ray tracing, and machine learning.

According to Cerny, out of the three areas, rasterized rendering has the lowest potential for growth with improvements coming from using larger GPU or faster memory.

Ray tracing has growth potential as the technology is still new and the tech is expected to see “quantum leaps” in the next decade, while machine learning has the greatest growth potential, which explains which it is the current focus for AMD and Sony.

In his presentation, Cerny also highlighted chances were high the market might not see hardware that uses technology from Project Amethyst until PlayStation 6, since creating a console is “roughly a four-year journey.”

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