Rumor: AMD Wins Contract for PlayStation 6 Chip - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 16 September 2024 / 2,323 Views
AMD won a deal with Sony to fabricate the chip for the PlayStation 6 in 2022, according to three sources who spoke with Reuters.
Intel tried to get the deal with Sony during a bidding process to supply the chip for the PS6, but lost out to AMD. The two companies were the final two contenders, according to the sources.
"Console chip designs typically try to ensure compatibility with earlier versions of the system, to allow users to run older games on the new hardware. Moving from AMD, which made the PlayStation 5 chip, to Intel would have risked backwards compatibility, which was a subject of discussion between Intel and Sony engineers and executives," reads the report.
"Ensuring backward compatibility with prior versions of the PlayStation would have been costly and taken engineering resources. Allowing PlayStation users to play games they have purchased for older systems is a feature Sony often includes in a next-generation system."
Sony Interactive Entertainment announced the PlayStation 5 Pro last week. The mid-generation upgrade to the PS5 will launch on November 7 for $699.99 / £699.99 / €799.99 / ¥119,980. Pre-orders will open on September 26.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Will we get a time when games will release on PS4, PS5 and PS6?
I know this is a game console oriented website but I think the real news here is that Intel lost yet other foundry/chip design bid. Things are looking pretty dire for them in recent years
True, but hardly the first dominant company to age themselves out of the market.
It's hard to ignore AMD over Intel and nVidia for a console chip.
AMD beats Intel due to it's superior GPU's.
AMD beats nVidia due to it's superior CPU's.
Offer that at the right price with full backwards/forwards compatibility and you are onto a winner.
as an intel share holder this hurts again!
This would have been a tough one for Intel to crack but it would have been interesting. On the CPU side, I don't see there being any problems at all. Once you go x86-64, it should be very seamless to have games running on either AMD or Intel - and honestly both are at a great point right now, performance wise. But that GPU though would have been a huge hassle. I would guess PS6 would target Intel's next, next-gen Celestial architecture: Alchemist was their first, with Battlemage being the second (Lunar Lake chips shipping next month have that one in them, with discrete GPUs being early 2025). There is nothing wrong with Alchemist and Battlemage seems to be off to a very solid start - but yeah, it would have made backwards-compatibility really hard for Sony. Sony has their own, proprietary graphics API that runs close-to-the-metal of their AMD GPUs, which is unlike in the PC space where you target either a OpenGL or DirectX API and have it run across any brand of GPU.
they wouldn't care about backwards compatibility if Microsoft didn't push for it. but intel would of probably cost more anyway
Essay Pro