PlayStation recently shared a video where Mark Cerny took the stage at Sony Interactive Entertainment HQ to talk about the PS5 Pro. In the clip, the system architect delves into the latest hardware upgrades and tackles a few rumors swirling around this much-anticipated console. One of the issues he addressed was the so-called “FLOPflation.” This term emerged when an exaggerated figure of 33.5 TFLOPs was mistakenly circulated, due to a leaker misinterpreting the console’s adoption of RDNA 3-inspired components.
In truth, the PS5 Pro hits the 16.7 TFLOPs mark, which is a notable jump from the PS5’s 10 TFLOPs. Interestingly, one accurate leak before the official reveal hinted at the PS5 Pro reaching 300 TOPS with 8-bit calculations. For 16-bit computations, it achieves 67 TFLOPS. Cerny explained that while the PS5 Pro embraces many features from RDNA 3, it still relies heavily on Sony’s unique version of the AMD RDNA 2 architecture. This balance ensures developers don’t need to rewrite existing code for this new machine.
One of the standout improvements on the PS5 Pro, as highlighted by Cerny, is its advanced Ray Acceleration structure. It uses BVH8 (Bounding Volume Hierarchy) and incorporates enhanced stack management in the hardware. Essentially, this means the graphics shader code runs more efficiently and effectively on the new system.
To give more context, BVH is a key concept in 3D rendering. It involves using bounding boxes to simplify and speed up graphics calculations, such as how reflections are processed. The original PS5 utilized BVH4, which grouped these bounding boxes into sets of four for ray tracing (RT). The PS5 Pro advances this further by using BVH8 for RT calculations. Moreover, its Ray Intersection Engine has improved from evaluating 4 boxes and 1 triangle in the PS5 to assessing 8 boxes and 2 triangles in the PS5 Pro.
These enhancements in the Pro’s ray tracing hardware, thanks to the highly customized RDNA 2 GPU architecture, significantly boost performance, particularly with complex light interactions. However, there are only modest improvements when it comes to shadows and flat surface reflections.
For those who want to dive deeper, the full 37-minute video is a treasure trove of tech details. It also offers fascinating insights into the console market dynamics and the innovations driving competition in this space.
