AMD and Sony collaborate on Next-Gen Chip Architecture, Prioritizing Machine learning for Future Consoles
santa Clara, CA & Tokyo, Japan – February 27, 2025 – AMD and Sony are jointly developing a new chip architecture, codenamed ”Project Amethyst,” designed to dramatically improve graphics processing efficiency and scalability for future consoles, possibly powering a PlayStation beyond the PS5. The collaboration, revealed in a video released Thursday featuring AMDS Senior VP and General Manager of the Computing and Graphics Group, Jack Huynh, and PlayStation architect Mark cerny, focuses on leveraging machine learning to overcome limitations in traditional rendering techniques.
The project aims to move beyond “brute force” approaches to graphics rendering, which struggle to scale with increased power.Rather, Project Amethyst will prioritize more efficient execution of machine-learning-based neural networks, similar to those powering AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling technology and Sony’s PlayStation Spectral Resolution Scaling (PSSR) system. While currently in the “early days” and existing only as a simulation, Cerny stated the initial “results are quite promising.”
Currently, GPUs handle graphics calculations by breaking them into subproblems for parallel processing, a process Cerny described as inefficient. Project Amethyst introduces “neural arrays” that allow compute units to share data and function as a “single focused AI engine.” This approach enables more scalable shader engines capable of processing larger portions of the screen simultaneously.
“More and more of what you see on screen… be touched or enhanced by ML,” Huynh explained, indicating a future where machine learning plays a significantly larger role in game rendering.the architecture will connect small sets of compute units, rather than the entire GPU, to facilitate this more streamlined processing.
The collaboration was initially teased in July 2024 by Huynh on X (formerly Twitter), symbolized by two pieces of amethyst split from the same stone, representing the shared vision between PlayStation and AMD. The new chipset is expected to power a console “in a few years’ time,” according to Cerny.
