AMD reportedly already got the contract to build a chip for Sony's next-gen PlayStation 6

AMD and Sony are working together once again, this time on a next-gen SoC for a next-gen PlayStation 6 console.

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The news on Sony's next-gen PlayStation 6 is coming from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, who reports that he can 100% confirm that AMD has received the contract for the next-gen PlayStation 6. AMD has already baked a beefed-up codenamed "Viola" SoC for Sony's upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro console, which should be revealed later this year and released towards the end of 2024, or into 2025 depending on multiple factors.

We have no hardware specs for the next-gen PlayStation 6 console, but I'd like to see maybe the same 8 cores and 16 threads of CPU power, but based on the current-gen Zen 4 architecture. AMD will have its next-gen Zen 5 architecture out later this year, but they're probably building a next-gen SoC for the PS6 with Zen 4 and 8C/16T, but at maybe up to 5GHz+ clock speeds (4.4GHz for the PS5 Pro and its Zen 2-based 8C/16T processor).

A next-gen PS6 would only need 16 threads of Zen 4 power to provide 4K 60FPS and even 4K 120FPS performance, but I think we'll see 8K being a bigger push with a PlayStation 6, so the higher-end CPU and 5.0GHz+ clock speeds would help there.

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We'd need to see double the VRAM over the PS5, which has 16GB of GDDR6 at 14Gbps, while the rumored PS5 Pro packs the same 16GB GDDR6 but at a faster 18Gbps, or possibly 20Gbps. It would be good to see AMD and Sony provide 32GB of faster GDDR7 memory inside of the PS6 console, helping in those major RT and high-res/high FPS gaming scenarios, allowing for 8K gaming as well.

SSD-wise, the next-gen PlayStation 6 should hopefully move towards PCIe Gen5, enabling up to 14GB/sec (14,000MB/sec) reads. Sony was betting big on the super-fast 7GB/sec reads of the PS5 when it was about to be released, and into its release the super-fast SSD was a big selling point.

PlayStation 6 rocking a 14GB/sec+ Gen5 SSD would be nice to see, with 2TB being the absolute minimum here, while a 4TB or even 8TB SSD would be great to see. Especially if games are getting bigger and bigger, as we're talking about the world of PS6... 100GB could be a minimum by then, as 200GB+ isn't strange anymore, only allowing for a few games to be installed at once on a regular PS5.