Sony plans an ambitious technical move for the PS5 Pro: adapting AMD's future FSR4, designed for the PC RDNA4 architecture, to the console's custom hardware. The key won't be a direct implementation, but a version based on INT8 operations that allows its execution on the console's GPU. This effort, led by Mark Cerny and the result of collaboration with AMD, aims to offer state-of-the-art AI upscaling, combining high resolution, ray tracing, and high frame rates to define the next generation of console graphics.🚀
The technical challenge: RDNA4 architecture vs. INT8 instructions⚙️
The main obstacle is architectural. FSR4 is optimized for the AI units and new compute blocks of RDNA4, an architecture that the PS5 Pro will not use. The solution involves translating the AI upscaling algorithms to 8-bit integer operations (INT8). This approach enables efficient execution on the console's existing and custom hardware, which does support these instructions. Although it may imply a slight loss of precision compared to floating-point calculations (FP16) ideal for AI, the balance between performance and quality would be optimal for a closed console system, maximizing the GPU's performance in 3D rendering and ray tracing.
Implications for the graphics ecosystem🌍
This adaptation underscores the divergence between PC and console hardware. While on PC evolution occurs through new architectures (RDNA4, Blackwell), consoles maximize known silicon. If Sony succeeds, the PS5 Pro could offer image quality and ray tracing performance that rivals more powerful raw PC GPUs, but thanks to an ultra-optimized software-hardware implementation. This positions the console as a benchmark in graphical efficiency for the coming years.
How will the adaptation of FSR4 to the customized architecture of the PS5 Pro affect performance and visual fidelity compared to its native implementation in RDNA4 for PC?
(PD: Your CPU heats up more than the debate between Blender and Maya)