Before they were released, there were murmurs that the current generation of gaming consoles from Sony and Microsoft would be the last. Cloud gaming was the new hot thing, with everyone trying to get in on the action. Well, a job listing on AMD’s LinkedIn page suggests that we’ll be getting at least one more generation of consoles.
Calling all System-on-Chip Verification Engineers
AMD is responsible for the custom-designed SoCs (system-on-chip) powering the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles. Those are based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture. AMD is now on the hunt for a verification engineer. They’re needed, specifically, to work on the “…next generation of a complex SOC design”.
The listing doesn’t outright say if it’s for the PlayStation 5 Pro or the PlayStation 6, or even for a new Xbox. We don’t think Sony or Microsoft would like that very much. But with the precedent Sony set previously with the updated PS4 Pro model, it’s likely this upgraded chip is for the rumoured PS5 Pro said to be coming in 2024.
Then there’s that patent Sony filed for a few months ago. The patent details a way to make ray tracing slightly less system intense by offloading some of the calculations to a dedicated ray-tracing unit (RTU). That adds credence to the PS5 Pro rumour.
Don’t count on hearing about any new consoles for a while though. The current generation is only eighteen months old. We expect Sony and Microsoft to milk them for at least another year or two. We hope supply constraints ease up a bit before then, so people can actually get their hands on the consoles before the new ones turn up.
There is, of course, the possibility that this verification engineer won’t be working on a console for Sony or Microsoft at all. There could be a completely different application that could make use of an SoC of this nature. A proper upgrade to Nintendo’s Switch, and not just a slightly prettier screen, perhaps?
Source: PlayStation Universe