PS6 Next Gen AMD Architecture To Feature Dedicated Path Tracing GPU 'Radiance Cores'

Mark Cerny, lead architect for PS5/PS5 Pro and Jack Huynh, AMD’s SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics Group, have both appeared in a new video detailing Project Amethyst and beyond as both companies look to the next-generation of hardware

One of the key features that both companies are working on to implement for PS6 is the addition of Radiance Cores. Forming part of AMD’s RDNA5, these dedicated RT cores will now tackle the job that shader cores currently perform on AMD GPUs, which results in faster processing for ray-tracing and opens up the door for path tracing. This frees precious resources for the CPU and GPU as they are no longer required to handle the tasks.

Radiance Cores takes full control of ray traversal, one of the most compute-heavy parts of the process. And that frees up the CPU for geometry and simulation, and lets the GPU focus on what it does best; shading and lighting. The result? A cleaner, faster and more efficient pipeline built for the next generation of ray-traced games.

As previously reported, Sony is heavily rumoured to be launching a handheld companion to the PS6, which is said to be more powerful than the Xbox All X and the Nintendo Switch 2. Furthermore, Law’s Moore Is Dead has claimed that the PS6 ray-tracing performance is the equivalent to that of Nvidia’s RTX 5090.