Yesterday, PlayStation shared a fascinating video featuring Mark Cerny at Sony Interactive Entertainment HQ, where he presented a detailed technical breakdown of the PS5 Pro. As the system architect, Cerny took the opportunity to address and dispel some of the rumors that have been circulating around the new console. One of his main focuses was on what he termed “FLOPflation.” This came in response to an inaccurate rumor about the PS5 Pro’s performance, which mistakenly claimed the console achieved 33.5 TFLOPs due to a mix-up by a leaker who misunderstood the hardware’s integration of RDNA 3-inspired architecture.
In truth, the PS5 Pro is capable of delivering 16.7 TFLOPs, an improvement over the PS5’s 10 TFLOPs. Additionally, reliable leaks speculated correctly that the PS5 Pro achieves 300 TOPS for 8-bit calculations, while 16-bit calculations reach 67 TFLOPS. Cerny explained that Sony’s RDNA 2.X architecture, a customized AMD RDNA 2 platform, incorporates several RDNA 3 enhancements but keeps enough of its original structure to avoid necessitating code rewrites for the new hardware.
During the seminar, Mark Cerny highlighted that one of the most significant enhancements in the PS5 Pro is its novel Ray Acceleration structure using BVH8 (Bounding Volume Hierarchy). This innovation taps into improved stack management in hardware, leading to better-organized, more straightforward, and efficient graphics shader code.
To put it simply, BVH relates to a method used in 3D rendering where bounding boxes aid in computing graphics like reflections. The PS5 employed BVH4, grouping bounding boxes in sets of four for ray tracing calculations. In contrast, the PS5 Pro advances to BVH8, doubling the capacity for ray tracing calculations with eight bounding boxes. Similarly, the Ray Intersection Engine capability increases, allowing it to check rays against eight boxes and two triangles, compared to four boxes and one triangle on the PS5.
These enhancements in the PS5 Pro’s ray-tracing hardware—especially made possible through the deeply customized RDNA 2 GPU architecture—result in impressive performance boosts for rendering curved and textured light reflections. However, gains are more moderate when it comes to shadows and flat reflections.
For those interested in diving deeper into the technical details and insights into the console market dynamics, the full 37-minute video on the PS5 Pro offers a wealth of information. It’s a must-watch for anyone keen to understand the technologies that underscore competition in the gaming industry.
