Yesterday, PlayStation released an intriguing video featuring Mark Cerny at Sony Interactive Entertainment HQ, where he led a technical seminar on the upcoming PS5 Pro. As the system architect, Cerny delved into the console’s new hardware details and took the opportunity to address some swirling rumors. A particularly interesting topic he covered was what he called “FLOPflation.” This arose from a mistaken leak that suggested the PS5 Pro would boast an erroneous 33.5 TFLOPs, which was a misinterpretation by a leaker who had misunderstood the deeper integration of RDNA 3-inspired architecture.
In truth, the PS5 Pro manages 16.7 TFLOPs, a jump from the PS5’s 10 TFLOPs. A valid pre-release leak did hint at the PS5 Pro’s ability to hit 300 TOPS during 8-bit computations. When it comes to 16-bit calculations, the console can reach 67 TFLOPS. As Cerny explained, Sony’s RDNA 2.X, a customized version of AMD’s RDNA 2, incorporates several RDNA 3 features but retains enough of the original to prevent the need for substantial code rewrites.
Mark Cerny identified the most significant upgrades in the PS5 Pro as enhancements in its Ray Acceleration structure, now using BVH8 (Bounding Volume Hierarchy), alongside improved “Stack management in hardware.” This upgrade results in more efficiently managed and performance-oriented graphics shader code on the new machine.
The BVH technique, which utilizes bounding boxes in 3D rendering for tasks like reflections, saw an upgrade from BVH4 on the PS5, which grouped boxes in sets of four. The PS5 Pro adopts BVH8, thereby allowing more complex RT calculations. The Ray Intersection Engine has also been enhanced, doubling its capability from evaluating rays against 4 boxes and 1 triangle on the PS5 to 8 boxes and 2 triangles on the PS5 Pro.
These advancements in the PS5 Pro’s ray tracing hardware stem from the heavily customized RDNA 2 GPU architecture, shared with its predecessor. They yield notable performance improvements with complex light displays like curved and textured reflections, though gains with shadow and flat reflections are moderate.
For those with a technical curiosity and an interest in understanding the competitive console market, the full 37-minute presentation video offers a wealth of information. It dives deep into the technologies powering this new console edition, making it a must-watch for gaming aficionados.
