PS6 Set To Use New ‘Universal Compression’ Tech That Hugely Frees Up GPU Processing Bandwidth

Sony and AMD’s Project Amethyst collaboration includes a new technique known as Universal Compression, which is one of many new technical innovations that will be implemented into the PS6, and saves valuable GPU processing bandwidth.

Speaking in a new video posted by Sony, Mark Cerny, the lead architect for PS5, AMD’s Jack Huynh, SVP and GM, Computing and Graphics Group, discussed many of the new features that we can from this partnership, which is set to define the architecture of Sony’s new home console.

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Universal Compression is a new technique that that automatically compresses any data sent to the GPU in order to maximise bandwidth, and is essentially the next-gen version of DCC and AMD’s answer to Nvidia’s RTX Neural Texture Compression.

Here’s what Huynh had to say in the video:

It’s a system that evaluates every piece of data headed to memory, not just textures, and compresses it whenever possible. Only the essential bytes are sent out, which dramatically reduces memory bandwidth usage. That means the GPU can deliver more detail, higher frame rates and great efficiency.

As previously reported, the same video details a number of key features that are being developed as part of the Sony and AMD collaboration, including Radiance Cores. Furthermore, Cerny said in the same video that he’s ‘very excited’ to be bringing a number of these features to a ‘future console’ down the line, which is obviously PS6.