Just yesterday, PlayStation shared a fascinating video featuring Mark Cerny at Sony Interactive Entertainment’s headquarters. In this video, the PS5 Pro’s system architect delivered an insightful presentation peeling back the layers on the cutting-edge hardware of the PS5 Pro and addressing some of the speculative chatter surrounding the upcoming console. A particular point of focus was Cerny’s explanation of “FLOPflation.” This came after a mistaken leak suggested the PS5 Pro boasted an exaggerated 33.5 TFLOPs, likely due to a leaker’s misunderstanding involving the system’s RDNA 3-inspired architecture.
The truth of the matter is that the PS5 Pro actually pushes out 16.7 TFLOPs, a respectable leap from the PS5’s 10 TFLOPs. Another leak got something spot-on, hinting that the PS5 Pro can deliver 300 TOPS when working on 8-bit calculations, while 16-bit calculations hit up to 67 TFLOPs. Cerny pointed out that while the PS5 Pro utilizes an advanced RDNA 2.X architecture—customized by Sony and based on AMD RDNA 2—it incorporates several RDNA 3 elements, ensuring the evolution doesn’t necessitate reworking existing software for the new platform.
Mark Cerny highlighted that one of the PS5 Pro’s standout upgrades is the revamped Ray Acceleration structure, employing BVH8 (Bounding Volume Hierarchy). This boost is complemented by enhanced “Stack management in hardware,” which optimizes and simplifies the handling of graphics shader code on the new system for even better performance.
To break it down, BVH is a technique in 3D rendering that uses bounding boxes to enhance visual computation tasks like reflections. The PS5 used BVH4, where bounding boxes were grouped in fours for ray tracing calculations. On the other hand, the PS5 Pro has upgraded to BVH8, doubling the capability to process eight bounding boxes per calculation. Additionally, its Ray Intersection Engine has advanced from analyzing rays against four boxes and one triangle with the PS5 to eight boxes and two triangles on the PS5 Pro.
These technical advancements in the PS5 Pro’s ray tracing hardware—courtesy of its highly customized RDNA 2 GPU architecture—bring impressive performance boosts, particularly noted in complex curved and uneven light reflections, though the improvements in shadowing and flatter reflections are more moderate.
For those keen on delving deeper into the technicalities, the full 37-minute video offers a wealth of information. It not only covers the intricacies of the PS5 Pro’s advancements but also gives a broader perspective on the console market and the technology battles being fought within it.
