As PlayStation 4 begins the last part of its existence, AMD and Sony are preparing the technical platform for the PlayStation 5. With a Ryzen processor at the heart of the future console?
With 80 million copies sold in 3 and a half years, the PlayStation 4 is a huge success, but its glory period is behind it. According to a Sony official, PS4 “is in the final phase” of its life cycle, as reported in a tweet by the Wall Street Journal reporter Takashi Mochizuki. If the console will continue to be the main launch platform for games for another year or two, it is now to the PlayStation 5 that Sony focuses its attention.
And it’s still the AMD counterpart that would be in charge in the development of the processor. As noted by the Phoronix site specializing in news on Linux, a chief engineer at Sony is indeed one of the main contributors to a key software in the compilation of code (LLVM) dedicated to AMD Ryzen processors. Simple rumor? A priori no.
Besides the fact that we cannot imagine a programmer of a company to work for free for a big company, we know that the links between Sony and AMD are very strong since it is AMD that developed the processor and graphics card for PlayStation 4.
AMD is very famous in the field of chips for consoles, and for a while. If the Californian company started with the graphics parts of the Nintendo Gamecube and Wii, with modest performances, it knew how to increase in power with the 3D chip of the Xbox 360. Finally to evict any competition (Intel, IBM, Nvidia) of home consoles: PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One and Xbox One X all integrate CPUs and GPUs designed by AMD.
According to Phoronix experts, the Sony developer is optimizing the code execution program for first-generation Ryzen processors. What makes sense since the technical specifications of a console relegate the pure performance or technological novelty to the background. What matters most? The stability of the chips and their performance/cost ratio.
