PlayStation’s Mark Cerny did a deep dive into the PS5 Pro and Sony’s new partnership with AMD

Mark Cerny, PlayStation’s lead engineer, is back to explain the nitty-gritty of how the game works It achieves its various graphical improvements. Show me first In September and touches on how the Pro’s improved GPU uses technology from AMD and announces a “deeper collaboration” between Sony and the chip maker.

The PS5 uses AMD’s RDNA 2 GPU architecture that was originally released in 2020, while the PS5 Pro uses what Cerny refers to in the video as RDNA 2.X. The new GPU is a combination of what has already been introduced on with some features selected from the more advanced ones AMD launches in 2022. This is coupled with ray tracing technologies that Cerny says are future RDNA technology on AMD’s roadmap, and custom machine learning features created for the PS5 Pro. These machine learning components also appear to be a key part of AMD and Sony’s future work together.

“AMD has been a great partner to SIE for many years now,” Cerny says. “I am honored to announce that we have begun a deeper collaboration with a focus on machine learning-based technology for graphics and gameplay.”

“Amethyst,” the name the two companies chose for their new project together, is primarily concerned with creating “a more optimal architecture for machine learning,” according to Cerny. New hardware architectures the companies are developing could benefit AMD’s future consoles and GPUs, but they’re just one part of the plan. Sony and AMD are also working on “democratizing machine learning,” which sounds like possible software tools to make it easier for developers to implement AI into gameplay and graphics.

The entire video is packed with information about the thinking and engineering that went into the PS5 Pro and is worth a watch if you’re looking for more details on what “Pro” means in this case. That may not convince you to upgrade to the new $700 console, but it certainly shows that Sony didn’t take its design too seriously.