Sony confirms PS5 features: 7nm AMD processor, SSD, backward compatibility and more

[Blexfraptor]

PS5 is increasingly taking more form. If we already knew data about your hardware last week, now it is Sony itself that has confirmed many of the features that this new PlayStation 5 will have. Among them we find the use of a 7 nm AMD processor, Navi architecture for the GPU, or the use of an SSD.

Processor and AMD graphics card of 7 nm: new confirmed features of PS5
All this information has been revealed exclusively to the Wired media, which has interviewed Mark Cerny, who was already the main architect of PS Vita's PlayStation 4. This interview has an official character, since Sony itself has retweeted it in its official PlayStation account.

Both Sony and Microsoft are extending the current generation of consoles to the maximum, especially with the two updates they launched with Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro, with excellent performance at the level of a mid-range PC. However, 2020 will be the year in which we will know both consoles, with a performance that will surprise.

The console, which will replace PS4 and PS4 Pro and whose name is probably PS5, will not be released in 2019. Despite this, there are already studies that are working with it, and Sony has accelerated the deployment of the PS5 development kits for that the developers have time to prepare the games they launch for her.

In this generational change we will find an important hardware jump, since the console will use the 7 nm of AMD (manufactured by TSMC) in all its splendor. We found an AMD processor based on the Zen 2 architecture of 7 nm, which will debut the Ryzen 3000 that will be announced before summer.

As for the GPU, we found a GPU based on the Navi architecture of 7 nm with which AMD wants to deal with NVIDIA in the high-end, although in the highest still remain somewhat remote. The GPU will be compatible with Ray Tracing, the technology of NVIDIA that renders with more realism the illuminations and reflections of the games. The console will have an HDMI port capable of displaying images in 8K, so we intuit that it will carry HDMI 2.1 port.

3D surround sound and SSD: other confirmed news
The sound will be another of the strong points on which nothing had been filtered. The AMD APU, which will include the processor and the GPU, will also have a customized unit for 3D audio, which will redefine positional sound in games. They do not detail anything, but it looks like it will have support for object-based audio, including compatibility with Dolby Atmos. It will also offer emulated surround sound for headphones.

On virtual reality they have not said if they are going to launch a new headset, since the current one offers good resolution and only requires that the console be more powerful. What you can do is play the PS4 games on PS5, so Sony will bet on the backward compatibility with PS4. In addition, the console will continue to accept physical games on Blu-ray.

Finally, the storage itself will receive a major change, where the console would have a high-speed SSD. It is not known exactly if it will be a 1TB SSD, but for what is detailed in the interview we will find a hybrid solution of SSD and HDD of 2 TB, with an acceleration similar to what Optane offers in PC, and that is probably a Adaptation of AMD StoreMI technology that does exactly the same, and allows a hard drive to use an SSD as a cache. This for the user will imply load times similar to using a normal SSD.

In short, we have to wait a few months to get to know more details, but Sony is ahead of E3 (which will not go) to reveal some secrets of your next console. The launch date has not been confirmed, but one would expect it to be in the second half of 2020, which is when TSMC will mass-produce its chips.