A new PlayStation patent filed by Sony Interactive Entertainment is making the rounds for its implications involving a possible PS5 Pro. At the moment of publishing, Sony hasn't announced or even hinted at any plans involving a more powerful version of the PS5. And if it does have plans to make the PS5 equivalent to the PS4 Pro, we likely won't hear about it for several more years. However, while the official PR mouth of Sony isn't talking about the iterative console, a recently filed patent does seem to hint at its seemingly inevitable existence.

The new patent, which was filed back in 2019 but only published recently, possibly hints at a "high-end" PS5 being in the pipeline, and that this upgrade may come via cloud gaming and make use of PlayStation Now.

The patent's technical jargon title is "Scalable Game Console CPU/GPU Design for Home Console and Cloud Gaming." As you can see, the headline isn't very interesting or divulging. However, some excerpts describing the patent are.

“In a multi-GPU simulation environment, frame buffer management may be implemented by multiple GPUs rendering respective frames of video, or by rendering respective portions of each frame of video," reads the patent. "One of the GPUs controls HDMI frame output by virtue of receiving frame information from the other GPU(s) and reading out complete frames through a physically connected HDMI output port. Or, the outputs of the GPUs can be multiplexed together.”

Another paragraph within the patent adds:

“As understood herein. SoC technology can be applied to video simulation consoles such as game consoles, and in particular, a single SoC may be provided for a ‘light’ version of the console while plural SoCs may be used to provide a ‘high-end’ version of the console with greater processing and storage capability than the ‘light’ version. The ‘high end’ system can also contain more memory such as random-access memory (RAM) and other features and may also be used for a cloud-optimized version using the same game console chip with more performance.”

Taking into consideration the language above, it's easy to think the "light" and "high-end" references are referring to a PS5 Pro, but for now, this is a bit of a stretch and speculation. In fact, the patent seems to describe achieving this "high-end" version not with new hardware, but via the cloud. In other words, the PS5 Pro may be a real thing in idea, but in practice will be nothing like the PS4 Pro.



Posted: Aug 05, 2020 8:11 am
Related Forum: PlayStation Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/ps5-pro-playstation-5-console-sony-patent/