Sony and AMD just gave us a sneak peek at the tech that could power the PlayStation 6. In an announcement video, PS5 lead architect Mark Cerny joined AMD Senior Vice President Jack Huynh to reveal their mysterious partnership called Project Amethyst. The duo unveiled three key pieces for the project: Neural Arrays, Radiance Cores, and Universal Compression. These AI or machine learning-powered techs could redefine how PS6 handles light, detail, and performance.
Neural Arrays are designed to make the GPU in PS6 think smarter, not just harder. “Instead of having a bunch of compute units all working on their own,” Huynh explained. “We built a way for them to team up to share data and process things together like a single focus AI engine.”
That means cleaner upscaling, smoother frame times, and more advanced neural rendering — the foundation of FSR and PlayStation’s own PSSR. “Bigger ML models, less overhead, more efficiency, and way more scalability as workloads grow,” added Huynh.
Then there are Radiance Cores, dedicated hardware blocks that handle ray and path tracing without bogging down shader performance. The result? A ‘cleaner, faster, and more efficient pipeline’ for real-time cinematic ray-traced lighting that finally makes next-gen visuals more than a buzzword.
“On top of those performance increases, there’s other features in the works, too, such as flexible and efficient data structures for the geometry being raytraced,” added Cerny.
Finally, Universal Compression reimagines memory bandwidth — compressing all data possible, not just textures. They see that developers keep getting bottlenecked as next-gen
rendering techniques require ‘significantly’ more bandwidth for 4K textures and ray tracing denoising mass for smooth asset streaming. Huynh says that this tech will ‘dramatically’ reduce memory bandwidth usage so the GPU can deliver more detailed, higher frame rates with greater efficiency.
We still have to wait until those are applied to games released in the market, however. Cerny admitted that all three AI technologies are still in simulation, but he also hinted they’re being built for a not-so-distant future console.
“Overall, it’s of course still very early days for these technologies. They only exist in simulation right now, but the results are quite promising and I’m really excited about bringing them to a future console in a few years time,” he said. If that doesn’t sound like a not-so-subtle nod to the imminent launch of PlayStation 6, well, nothing does.
PlayStation 6’s release date itself might not be far off. Reported by Metro, a leak said that Sony’s next-gen console could target a 2027 release window. A Reuters report also confirmed that AMD has secured the PS6 contract after a fierce bidding war with Broadcom and Intel back in 2022.
It’s clear that Project Amethyst isn’t just about building faster GPUs. It’s laying the foundation for a new era of AI-driven gaming consoles, and the PS6 could be its first showcase.
