Looking ahead: Prior leaks and rumors regarding the PlayStation 6 primarily focused on AMD's future hardware architectures and their dramatic improvements to ray tracing performance. A brief new presentation from Sony and AMD provides a more in-depth description of next-generation software and hardware techniques – without specifically mentioning the upcoming console.
Sony and AMD recently shared a short video in which executives from the two companies describe in-development hardware and rendering techniques. Although Sony has not formally announced the PlayStation 6, the technologies mentioned in the video will likely be crucial for the console and AMD's future PC hardware.
Over nearly nine minutes, lead PlayStation architect Mark Cerny and AMD graphics head Jack Huyn explained three new technologies: Neural arrays will enable new machine learning techniques; Radiance Cores will improve ray tracing performance; and Universal Compression will minimize bandwidth usage.
Neural Arrays allow a GPU's compute units to work in unison to process AI workloads, minimizing overhead and enabling the use of larger machine learning models. This will likely improve the image quality from AMD's FSR upscaling and the PlayStation 5 Pro's take on the feature, PSSR.
Cerny and Huyn also hinted at the possibility of using machine learning for virtualized geometry, a capability that Nvidia introduced with the RTX 50 series graphics cards. It might enhance the efficiency and performance of virtual geometry systems that resemble Unreal Engine 5's Nanite and the micropolygon system Ubisoft introduced in Assassin's Creed Shadows.
Moreover, Huyn mentioned ray regeneration, another area where AMD is playing catch-up with Nvidia. The company's answer to Nvidia's ray reconstruction will likely aim to integrate machine learning into the denoising process necessary for ray tracing to provide clear images.
To enhance ray tracing and path tracing performance, AMD plans to introduce Radiance Cores, which perform these workloads on specialized hardware blocks. Radiance Cores build on Neural Radiance Caching, a feature AMD previously mentioned while discussing FSR Redstone.
The final feature, Universal Compression, builds on the PlayStation 5 Pro's Delta Color Compression to increase the efficiency of data transferred to memory. This will conserve memory bandwidth, which is critical for ray tracing, machine learning, high-resolution textures, and other features.
Although Cerny admitted that the new technologies are still undergoing testing, he confirmed that Sony plans to introduce them in "a future console," likely referring to the PlayStation 6. Prior leaks indicate that the next-generation console might arrive in 2027 or early 2028, with a tape-out planned for later this year.