PlayStation 5 Pro Specs Detailed, ‘FLOPflation’ Myths Dismissed by System Architect Mark Cerny

Yesterday, PlayStation released a video featuring Mark Cerny delivering a detailed presentation on the PS5 Pro at Sony Interactive Entertainment’s headquarters. As the system architect, Cerny delved into the technical advancements of the upcoming console and sought to clear up some circulating rumors. He particularly focused on addressing the buzz around “FLOPflation.” This term arose after a misleading figure of 33.5 TFLOPs was erroneously leaked. The confusion stemmed from a leaker’s misconception about the hardware, mistakenly assuming it heavily relied on RDNA 3 architecture.

In truth, the PS5 Pro delivers 16.7 TFLOPs, a noticeable leap from the PS5’s 10 TFLOPs. Among the accurate leaks was information suggesting the Pro could achieve 300 TOPS on 8-bit calculations, and 67 TFLOPS for 16-bit computations. Cerny clarified that Sony’s customized AMD RDNA 2.X architecture integrates many RDNA 3 features but retains enough of its original architecture to avoid necessitating substantial code rewrites for developers.

Mark Cerny pointed out that the most significant upgrades in the PS5 Pro revolve around its new Ray Acceleration structure, which utilizes BVH8 (Bounding Volume Hierarchy) and boasts improved “Stack management in hardware.” This ensures that graphics shader code is more straightforward and efficient on the upgraded hardware.

BVH refers to how bounding boxes, commonly used in 3D rendering, aid in graphics computations like reflections. The PS5 utilized BVH4 (bounding boxes grouped in fours) for ray tracing calculations. In contrast, the PS5 Pro harnesses BVH8, effectively doubling this capacity for its ray tracing calculations. Additionally, the Ray Intersection Engine on the Pro can now check rays against 8 boxes and 2 triangles, compared to 4 boxes and 1 triangle on the standard PS5.

With these enhancements to the ray tracing hardware, derived from a highly customized RDNA 2 GPU architecture within the PS5, the PS5 Pro promises significant performance boosts in producing detailed, curved, and textured light reflections. However, the improvements for rendering shadows and flat reflections are modest.

For those keen to dive deeper into the technical specifics, the entire 37-minute video is a must-watch, offering fascinating insights into the console market and the technology that drives competition.

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