Sony PlayStation 6 Chip Design Reportedly Finalized, May Feature AMD's X3D Tech
The PlayStation 3 launched in 2006, and seven years later, we got the PlayStation 4 in 2013. Then, after another seven years, we got the PlayStation 5. Given this steady cadence, we'd expect the PlayStation 6 to launch in 2027. That gives Sony the better part of three years (counting the remainder of this year) to launch its new console. Plenty of time, right?
Well, maybe not quite as much time as it seems. According to well-known leaker Kepler (Kepler_L2 on Xwitter), Sony typically has a lead time of around two years from when it tapes out the first silicon design for its consoles and the launch of said console. In other words, after the chip design is finalized and first silicon comes back from the foundry, it typically takes around two years for that console to come to market.
So really it's more like one year, but fortunately for Sony, the company has apparently already finalized the design for the PlayStation 6's main processor. That, again, comes from Kepler, who posted these details on the ResetEra forums in a thread discussing another interesting rumor about the silicon powering Sony's next-gen game console: the idea that it might use 3D V-Cache in some way to improve performance.
That particular detail comes from the same post that we reported on this past Saturday, by zhangzhonghao on the ChipHell forums. While the bulk of his post was talking about AMD's upcoming CPU and GPU PC hardware, he also noted that Sony's going to be using stacked cache in some fashion for the SoC. This makes sense if the other part of his "leak" is correct and AMD is experimenting with stacked cache on future "Halo" parts to succeed Strix Halo.
Obviously, all of this is completely unsubstantiated rumor, but the details do fit together, and the sources are well-known as folks with insider connections. The idea of the PlayStation 6 sporting bleeding-edge AMD hardware including a stacked-silicon GPU cache is quite exciting for gamers, as any new console launch is—even for pure PC gamers, as it means a new wave of graphics technologies thanks to the new hardware. Let's hope these leaks hold true.
Hypothetical PlayStation 6 design (top image) imagined by Imagen 3.
