Sony exec confirms: Playstation 5 will be Zen 2, Navi based

In an exclusive interview with tech magazine Wired, Sony’s Playstation systems architect Mark Cerny spills some beans about Sony’s upcoming game console. For starters, the new addition to the Playstation family will contain a custom Ryzen 3rd generation cpu (Zen 2) and a Navi gpu. While the switch to a Zen based cpu was already expected due to Sony’s code contribution to the open source LLVM compiler.

Zen 3 based apu for PlayStation 5

Currently, the PlayStation 4 (and PlayStation 4 Pro) contains a custom 8-core, 28nm AMD apu. This apu is built around the aging Jaguar core, which was originally aimed at low power applications. It is easy to understand why Sony would prefer the a Zen 2 based cpu. From the little information AMD has released up to now, it becomes clear that the next generation Ryzen family will be very power efficient. Making them a perfect fit for purposes that need high performance in combination with high energy efficiency. Like a cpu for a next generation gaming console which would need to fit in a constrained space.

Navi

Sony’s systems architect also mentions that the system will contain a Navi based graphics subsystem. Due to economic and space constrains, this most likely means the console will contain a special Zen 2 based apu. A chiplet bundled with a custom IO die to connect the cpu to the Navi die and memory.

AMD has not yet revealed much about their Navi gpu family, but rumors are talking about a vast improvement in gaming performance over the current Vega offerings.

PlayStation model overview