Sony and AMD recently teamed up to release a video introducing a next-generation gaming technology collaboration plan called Project Amethyst. In the video, Mark Cerny, the chief designer of PlayStation 4 and PS5, along with Jack Huynh, the senior vice president of AMD's computing and graphics division, shared three key technological advancements: Neural Arrays, Radiance Cores, and Universal Compression. These innovative technologies aim to optimize ray tracing, upscaling, and machine learning rendering performance for future PlayStation consoles.
When it comes to ray tracing, AMD's graphics cards have consistently lagged behind NVIDIA's RTX GPUs. Over the past few years, AMD has tried to close the gap by enhancing rasterization performance, but Jack Huynh admits that this strategy is increasingly proving inadequate for handling today’s graphics-intensive games. He pointed out that Relying solely on raw computational power to advance ray tracing is simply not feasible., which is why AMD is developing an entirely new architecture that integrates Neural Arrays and Radiance Cores.
In the past, AMD's GPU processing units operated independently, a design that was effective in its early days. However, as modern games increasingly rely on high-performance upscaling technologies like FSR and Sony's PSSR, their performance at high resolutions has become somewhat inadequate. Neural Arrays address this issue by allowing the processing units to collaborate and share data. Jack Huynh mentioned that AMD doesn't plan to connect all parts of the GPU but rather enables the chips to A process for handling a large display area.. This technology signifies that future PlayStations and AMD graphic cards will achieve A brand new height in machine learning performance, thereby enhancing upscaling effects and ray reconstruction quality.
Radiance Cores is a new type of hardware developed by AMD, inspired by NVIDIA's strategy, specifically designed to tackle ray tracing and path tracing calculations. NVIDIA's RTX graphics cards feature dedicated RT cores that expedite the mathematical computations necessary for real-time ray simulations. Jack Huynh explains that Radiance Cores represent AMD's latest rendering technology, focusing on the traversal of light, responsible for Finding millions of rays within complex data structures and calculating their intersection points with millions of triangles in the scene.. With this task managed by Radiance Cores, other GPU components can process shaders and textures more swiftly, further boosting overall performance.
At the same time, both companies are developing a new software technology called Universal Compression, which is based on the existing Delta Color Compression technology from the PS5 and PS5 Pro. Theoretically, this new technology will be able to compress all the data in the graphics pipeline on Sony's next-generation console, reducing the memory bandwidth required by the GPU, and potentially lowering power consumption. Mark Cerny pointed out that the advantages of Universal Compression include Lower power consumption and higher fidelity assets are on the horizon, but even more importantly, the synergy with Neural Arrays and Radiance Cores is set to bring about significant transformation..
Even though Mark Cerny emphasizes that all these technologies are still in early development stages, it's clear that Sony and AMD are actively exploring ways to enhance ray tracing performance and upscaling tech. If advanced technologies like ray tracing and global illumination can be effectively integrated, they will undoubtedly transform the overall visual effects of games, providing a more immersive experience. Should Sony and AMD find ways to reduce the operational costs of these technologies, it would lead to an even better gaming experience for all players.
