Yesterday, PlayStation unveiled an intriguing video featuring Mark Cerny at the forefront, delivering an insightful PS5 Pro Technical Seminar from the headquarters of Sony Interactive Entertainment. As the system architect, Cerny took a deep dive into the innovative hardware of the PlayStation 5 Pro, aiming to clear the air around some circulating rumors. He made a point of addressing the term “FLOPflation,” which arose after a misleading 33.5 TFLOPs figure started making the rounds—this misinformation stemmed from a misunderstanding of the console’s hardware, assuming it heavily relied on RDNA 3-inspired architecture.
In truth, the PS5 Pro operates at 16.7 TFLOPs, a step up from the PS5’s 10 TFLOPs. One of the legitimate early leaks was spot on about the PS5 Pro reaching 300 TOPS in 8-bit calculations. Its 16-bit calculations, however, clock in at 67 TFLOPs. Cerny took the opportunity to explain that while Sony’s tailored RDNA 2 architecture—a version they refer to as RDNA 2.X—borrows some elements from RDNA 3, it stays sufficiently true to the original design, sparing developers from needing to rewrite code for the new system.
Mark Cerny highlighted the major enhancements of the PS5 Pro, notably its revamped Ray Acceleration structure using BVH8 (Bounding Volume Hierarchy). The upgraded system also boasts smarter “stack management in hardware,” streamlining graphics shader code to make it more efficient on the new console.
Bounding boxes play a key role in 3D rendering by handling calculations such as reflections. While the PS5 utilized BVH4, grouping bounding boxes in sets of four for ray tracing computations, the PS5 Pro scales up to BVH8, utilizing sets of eight. The Ray Intersection Engine has also improved, jumping from checking rays against four boxes and a triangle (as in the PS5) to eight boxes and two triangles on the PS5 Pro.
These changes to the ray-tracing capabilities of the PlayStation 5 Pro are rooted in its highly customized RDNA 2 GPU architecture—a powerful leap from the PS5. The result is significant performance boosts when dealing with curved and textured light reflections, although enhancements for shadows and flat reflections are more modest.
For those hungry for more specifics, the full 37-minute video on the PlayStation 5 Pro is well worth a watch. It’s packed with fascinating insights into the current console market landscape and the cutting-edge technologies necessary to thrive within it.
