Sony and AMD talk up radical new graphics technologies for PS6

Sony and its long-time partner AMD just pulled back the curtain on three new graphics technologies that will power a future PlayStation console. In a new video, PlayStation 5 lead architect Mark Cerny sat down with AMD’s Jack Huynh to detail the next evolution in gaming graphics, which Cerny hinted would arrive “in a few years’ time”.

A trio of clever GPU technologies

Cerny laid it out plainly, stating that the industry’s current approach to graphical power has essentially reached its limit. To get closer to the vision of game creators, the new strategy moves beyond raw horsepower and embraces a smarter, more efficient architecture. This new direction is the result of Project Amethyst, an ongoing collaboration between Sony and AMD.

The first big breakthrough is Neural Arrays, a clever system that lets a GPU’s compute units team up to work like a single, focused AI engine. Huynh explained this makes the chip’s workload massively more efficient, which will be a game changer for next-generation upscaling technologies like AMD’s FSR and PlayStation’s PSSR.

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Next up are Radiance Cores. These are dedicated hardware blocks designed specifically to handle the heavy lifting of real-time ray tracing and the even more demanding path tracing. Offloading this intensive work frees up the rest of the GPU to focus on shaders and textures, promising a significant speed boost.

Finally, the pair revealed Universal Compression. This new system compresses everything that goes through the GPU pipeline, not just textures. This dramatically frees up memory bandwidth, allowing the hardware to deliver more detail, higher frame rates, and greater overall efficiency.

While Cerny cautioned these technologies are still in the simulation stage, the implications are huge. The focus on efficiency could also be a massive benefit for a rumoured PlayStation handheld, where power consumption is key.