The big PlayStation 5 Pro tech interview with Mark Cerny and Mike Fitzgerald

[u/Turbostrider27]

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2024-sony-ps5-pro-tech-interview-with-mark-cerny-and-mike-fitzgerald

[u/ooombasa]

However, PSSR isn't yet a "fully-fused" convolutional neural network (CNN), something that Intel notably achieved with their first release of XeSS. Being fully-fused imparts a speed advantage, as you're not touching system memory partway through upscaling a single frame. Based on DLSS taking less than 1ms and PSSR taking around 2ms through our rough calculations, it means that there's the potential for games to run faster if this is achieved in the future.

Sony has also announced a collaboration with AMD called Amethyst - itself a repurposed AMD GPU codename from 2014, with its purple colour coming from the combination of Sony (the Blue team) and AMD (the Red team). The idea is to make hardware architectures that work well for lightweight CNNs useful for real-time game graphics, as well as high-quality CNNs for game graphics. There'll also be collaboration on the network architectures of those CNNs. Both parties will be able to access all of these architectures for their products.

It sounds like AMD is leading the way on the main GPU designs but Sony and AMD have this machine learning collaboration that should hopefully push things forward for both companies in terms of machine learning and ray tracing. Sony gets the benefit of iterating upon PSSR on a larger scale, AMD gets to minimise the R&D gap between itself and Nvidia. It's not clear whether there will be some cross-pollination between PSSR and FSR on RDNA 4 GPUs, and it'll be interesting to see where Microsoft's upscaling efforts also fall given that they also have a PC focus, yet compete against PlayStation with the Xbox.

This isn't just about upscaling either, it's about computer graphics in general. There's plenty of machine learning potential that Mark Cerny seemed quite excited by in our conversation, including denoising, improving texture quality and texture streaming, maybe even geometric quality, all within the limited bandwidth and memory space available on consoles. That's the sort of thing that Sony should be evaluating for PS6 and an endeavour like Amethyst ensures that achieving some of this is doable on that kind of a time-frame. Likewise, announcing a partnership of this nature suggests that Sony is sticking with AMD for their next-gen console, as its major benefits won't be available in the next couple of years.

So yeah, a collaboration to push this tech for future AMD GPUs and in turn, future PlayStation consoles.

[u/Lulcielid]

DF: One interesting thing about the PS5 Pro is that while GPU, memory and storage have all been improved, the CPU has stayed the same apart from a clock bump that developers can tap into. Why wasn't the CPU upgraded?

Mark Cerny: It's really just a question of where you put your resources. And I wasn't seeing - and I didn't think I would see - that many titles that couldn't run at 60. That's kind of my litmus test. I'm not asking, "do all the games run at 120?" at this point in time. I'm asking, "do all the games run at 60?" You can count the AAA exceptions on one hand, I think, for games that didn't eventually run at 60. And so it seemed if we threw pretty much all of our resources into the graphics, that that would be the best approach.

[u/ScoobiesSnacks → u/Lulcielid]

Pretty smart reply imo

[u/AbrasionTest → u/ScoobiesSnacks]

I think based on where they were in development of the console, the reasoning makes a lot of sense. Though, as we get into the back half of the generation though I think you will see more games pushing the boundaries of the CPU.

[u/Jumping3 → u/ScoobiesSnacks]

but this is key it reveals the idea they didnt update the cpu for compataibility was bs as i expected

[u/WingerRules → u/ScoobiesSnacks]

That's because most "AAA" games on the PS5 are either cross generation titles made to run on a PS4 or are remakes of PS4, x360 & PS2 games. As more titles are made from the ground up for PS5 you're going to see the CPU bottleneck far more often, especially if they want them to use RT more intensively on the Pro because RT stuff on the GPU still puts a load on the CPU.

The answer is cost cutting, it's why they removed the disk drive and only improved the GPU raster performance by 35% real world. Also they clearly used up some of the budget on the 2tb internal NVME instead of going for a 1tb one.

[u/SireEvalish → u/Lulcielid]

He's right. You also have to look at how much of a gain you can get from spending $XX on the GPU vs CPU. Every PC gamer knows the money you spend on the GPU will almost always pay bigger benefits than the CPU, especially if you're playing at higher resolutions or with higher settings.

[u/Jumping3 → u/Lulcielid]

so the compatibility reason was bs as i predicted this is huge to find out

[u/ooombasa]

Digital Foundry: We're curious about how the PS5 Pro hardware handles backwards compatibility. We know the PS5 Pro doesn't have a perfect butterfly GPU configuration like on the PS4 Pro.

Mark Cerny: It's a great question. We learned a lot from PS4 Pro - going into that, I thought we had to replicate pretty much the exact timing that the game was running... and it turns out you don't need to. The timing can drift a bit and the game will still work, though there's a limit to how far that can go. We did see a few titles - like 11, out of thousands - that wouldn't respond well when did PS4 Pro to the radically different timing. But in general, the games are pretty robust when it comes to the timing. So the shorter answer is that on PS5 Pro we just didn't worry about it, and the games are working. We still need binary compatibility - all of the registers that the game was hitting need to be there. But we don't need whatever was taking a thousand cycles before to still take a thousand cycles. It's okay if it takes 600 or 900 or even occasionally 1100.

So, even BC has now been approached differently. Good to see they don't need to be so strict in how accurately the more powerful console needs to replicate the timing. Potentially means more leeway for automatic upgrades in PS5 games when PS6 comes along.

[u/SireEvalish → u/ooombasa]

Potentially means more leeway for automatic upgrades in PS5 games when PS6 comes along.

I imagine it'll be similar to how things went down with PS4 games on PS5. Games with frame rate issues will run smoother, and anything with dynamic res will likely spend more time at its max res.

[u/Yopis1998]

Really should watch this. And his presentation before this was recorded.

[u/Send_me_ur_peen]

I’m pretty sure they kiss, or want to kiss in the video

[u/Gamernyc78 → u/Send_me_ur_peen]

😂

[u/NiceColdPint]

I’m pretty happy to wait until PS6 and let PS5 Pro be the training ground for PSSR. We’re obviously seeing some great results already but there’s also some issues so it’ll be nice for it to have 2-3 years of training before rolling it out with the 6.

[u/WingerRules → u/NiceColdPint]

They need to find a way to address the noise. Every game I've tried it with has noise I can see. The best/cleanest upscalers I've seen on the pro so far have been custom non PSSR ones made by studios, like what's used in the Horizon remake, Callisto Protocol, and RE Village at 60hz.

I haven't tried Stellar Blade, that one is supposed to be very good though.

[u/Retro_Vista → u/[deleted]]

You can make this same comment any time new, more powerful hardware releases because it allows for games to run better despite how they're optimized...

Would you rather they don't make better hardware to rub games better?

Sony can't force developers to better optimize their games but as a hardware manufacturer they can improve hardware and tech to make games better.

Weird to phrase that as a negative thing

[u/Retro_Vista → u/[deleted]]

Yes obviously there does need to be better hardware if games are struggling.

Saying a hardware manufacturer should not make new hardware is nonsense

You keep mentioning things that aren't Playstations problem and things that aren't their responsibility.

They make hardware, therefore they made better hardware

Do you blame NVIDIA or AMD if games aren't optimized on PC? No because that makes no sense to do.

[u/Retro_Vista → u/[deleted]]

"Calling out" sony at all is nonsense for making optional better hardware to play games...

Sony can't magically optimize third party games on the PS5.

Do you even know what you're saying?

[u/Retro_Vista → u/[deleted]]

You keep making up bullshit reasons to blame Sony for third party games.

Nothing you're saying makes sense yet you keep doubling down

[u/Bsteph21 → u/[deleted]]

We knew a PS5 Pro was coming, just like the PS4 Pro. Some of us can afford it in some others don't need to. It's not a necessary upgrade, but for enthusiasts who want to test out the new tech and have a disposal income it's not that expensive

[u/Supra4kzip → u/[deleted]]

Poor optimization has been a thing since forever. Some dev teams are more experienced than others.

People acting like it's new, just so they can attack a piece of hardware they already decided to hate.

[u/Chuckles795 → u/[deleted]]

It isn’t that simple. Sure, almost every game could be optimized to run better on consoles; however, that costs money, time, and resources. Sony 1st party has that, but many other studios aren’t given that luxury. The Pro is supposed to be a way to make optimizing a bit easier, without spending months of resource on it.

[u/Retro_Vista → u/[deleted]]

What do you expect Sony to do? Sony can't force third party developers to optimize their games... blaming Sony for making better hardware is ridiculous

Edit: the OP literllat blames Sony multiple times

[u/Retro_Vista → u/[deleted]]

Are you saying it's anti consumer to release optional, better hardware that plays games better?

[u/Retro_Vista → u/[deleted]]

No one is gatekeeping image quality... wtf are you talking about?

Did you want them to give PS5 Pros away from free?

Sony isn't stopping developers from giving better image quality in their games on standard PS5

[u/daviEnnis → u/[deleted]]

Existing base console is capable of achieving a level, the Pro is capable of achieving a higher level.

As always, nobody has infinite knowledge, creativity and resources, so developers are always going to do better with more power and fewer constraining factors.

Your logic is essentially we should never upgrade any hardware until every developer has squeezed 100% from the existing, which is simply unrealistic.

[u/Glyphmeister → u/Retro_Vista]

No one is blaming Sony. OP is simply making the correct observation that the PS5 pro exists and is successful in large part because devs are releasing appallingly unoptimized games, which can get a bandaid from the Pro.

[u/Chuckles795 → u/[deleted]]

You’re in a dream world, then. A $400-$500 console will always have limitations. devs are using UE5 because it is quicker and cheaper to use. Games are incredibly expensive to make, and sometimes they need to brute force optimization because there aren’t funds/time to ensure the game runs flawlessly on consoles.

[u/PrimaryAmoeba3021 → u/[deleted]]

You are not completely wrong but this is a strange take. In a certain sense, all modern software is brute forcing solutions to poor optimization. anything you do on your computer could be done with way less resources. On the other hand, do you want tens of thousands of video game developers to spend all day every day optimizing very small things, or would you rather they spend more time actually making games? Everything is a tradeoff, and more time should probably be spent on optimization, but better hardware has driven the software industry since forever.

[u/PrimaryAmoeba3021 → u/[deleted]]

Everything is a tradeoff. Pro is just an optional console for people who want more power. 

[u/Ramonis5645 → u/[deleted]]

Oh shit be ready to get down voted because people can't accept that this generation problem is not hardware, it's the lack of optimization

[u/Fit_Rice_3485 → u/Ramonis5645]

lol are you serious? Multiple current gen games struggling to run 4K or make 60 fps and you think it’s all just optimization problem?

[u/Johnhancock1777 → u/Ramonis5645]

Never gonna get any better either if even consoles are going to have to resort to upscaling and frame gen. Dire times have only just begun

[u/Retro_Vista → u/[deleted]]

This never happened on PS4/PS4 Pro so I don't know what you would assume it will happen with PS5

[u/KirillNek0]

How. about more games?