In-Depth Look at PlayStation 5 Pro Specifications and Mark Cerny’s Take on ‘FLOPflation’ Myths

Yesterday, PlayStation released a video featuring Mark Cerny, offering an in-depth technical seminar on the much-anticipated PS5 Pro at Sony Interactive Entertainment’s headquarters. As the lead system architect, Mark aimed to shed light on the latest hardware advancements and clear up some rumors that have been buzzing around the community. One issue he addressed was “FLOPflation,” which arose when a misleading figure of 33.5 TFLOPs circulated due to a misunderstanding by a leaker who made incorrect assumptions about the RDNA 3-inspired architecture’s depth of usage.

In fact, the PS5 Pro hits a performance mark of 16.7 TFLOPs compared to the PS5’s 10 TFLOPs. On another front, one of the accurate leaks had already indicated that the PS5 Pro can achieve 300 TOPS with 8-bit calculations. As for 16-bit calculations, they see a capability of 67 TFLOPS. Cerny further explained that while they included several features from RDNA 3, the RDNA 2.X, which is a tailored version of AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture for Sony, retains enough of the existing structure to avoid code rewrites, ensuring developers won’t need to overhaul their work for the new console.

Mark Cerny highlighted that the standout enhancements of the PS5 Pro revolve around its new Ray Acceleration system, which utilizes BVH8 (Bounding Volume Hierarchy) and incorporates improved hardware “stack management.” This translates to more streamlined, efficient handling of graphics shader code on the upgraded hardware.

Bounding Volume Hierarchy involves organizing bounding boxes, which are essential in 3D graphics rendering. On the PS5, BVH4, where bounding boxes come in groups of four, was used for RT (ray tracing) calculations. The PS5 Pro ups the game by employing BVH8, allowing calculations using groups of eight bounding boxes. Additionally, the Ray Intersection Engine sees a boost, moving from analyzing four boxes and one triangle on the PS5 to eight boxes and two triangles on the PS5 Pro.

These advancements in the ray tracing hardware for the PlayStation 5 Pro, accomplished through a highly customized version of the RDNA 2 GPU architecture initially used in the PS5, lead to significant performance improvements in rendering curved and complex light reflections, while offering moderate enhancements for shadows and flat reflections.

For those wanting to delve deeper, the complete 37-minute video is highly recommended. It provides fascinating insights into the console industry and the technological innovations that drive competition.