PlayStation 5's Boost Clock Design Opens Up a Lot of Opportunities, Says Developer

Sony opted for some bold choices when it comes to the design of its upcoming PlayStation 5 console, and we don't mean just visually. The hardware features a 'revolutionary' storage solution, according to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, and nosotros've covered that at length already.

But that's not the most surprising feature of the PlayStation v hardware. When the full specifications of the gaming system were revealed, nosotros learned that the CPU and GPU both featured a 'boost clock' design based on AMD's SmartShift technology. That means the frequencies are variable, though they are capped at iii.v GHz for the CPU and two.23 GHz for the GPU.

This is certainly unusual for a console. Microsoft, for case, opted to have fixed frequencies on its Xbox Series X and recently threw a jab at the rival on this very topic.

What do game developers recollect of the fashion the PlayStation 5 has been built? We asked Ryan Shah, CEO and Pb Programmer of UK indie studio Kitatus and Friends.

I recall it'south a bit like when developing for PC, where you accept access to all that different hardware and you can kind of tune things based on your needs. And what Sony are substantially saying are, here'southward your tool of options, you can absolutely throttle to the max. We prefer if you didn't, but if there's like a fringe instance where yous're but off that tiny bit of performance you demand, we will allow you clasp a little bit extra. It also opens upward a lot of unlike opportunities such as, say that you wanted to have rendering for some specific affair like a particle and you wanted to run it through something like the CPU for a specific cutscene, that'd exist possible now whereas historically you had to be really conscientious that yous didn't overflowing a specific thread. It opens up a lot of interesting opportunities of offloading that kind of stuff elsewhere on the machine, which is something that's getting less and less mutual, to offload other parts of the motorcar, but it seems similar especially from PlayStation 5's technical briefing past Marking Cerny a few weeks back, they're really pushing for that 'Here's the hardware. Here'due south how you access what you demand, go in and make something beautiful' kind of mantra.

The PlayStation 5 doesn't have a release appointment or cost even so. All the same, several retailers beyond multiple countries accept now added dedicated PlayStation v pre-order pages, which may propose that pre-orders will starting time shortly. When they do, nosotros should as well get the last release engagement and/or pricing details.

Check back later this week for our full interview with Ryan Shah on the studio's debut title, Nth^0: Infinity Reborn, scheduled for a February 2021 release on PlayStation v, Xbox Series X and PC.