AI upgrades will be deployed in AMD-supported gaming consoles starting in 2024, including the yet-to-be-revealed PlayStation 5 Pro (PS5 Pro) and PlayStation 6 (PS6). In an interview, AMD chief technology officer (CTO) Mark Papermaster stated that the company would realize AI-based upgrades on its gaming devices.
Papermaster confirmed that AMD could redesign its upscale technology, based on FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), to integrate AI-based upgrading solutions to compete with NVIDIA's DLSS and Intel's XeSS technologies.
With the next generation of gaming consoles coming in the next few years, Papermaster's statement suggests that the yet-to-be-announced PS5 Pro, rumored to be launched later in 2024, may feature AI upgrade capabilities.
According to Tom's Hardware and Wccftech, Papermaster stated that 2024 is an important year for AMD. The company has invested several years in developing hardware and software capabilities for AI and recently completed incorporating AI support across its product portfolio. From cloud, edge, PCs, and gaming devices, AMD is leveraging AI to enhance its gaming devices.
Based on Papermaster's statement, it appears that AMD is implementing AI upgrades as a company-wide initiative, aiming to "AI-ify" all of AMD's applications. This effort is not just to be more competitive in the upscale sector but to specifically focus on strengthening its competitiveness against NVIDIA's DLSS technology.
The AI strategy mentioned above started to make sense as AMD incorporated the XDNA NPU in its latest Ryzen desktop PC and mobile accelerated processing units (APUs). Integrating AI into all of AMD's software product portfolio is expected to boost the adoption rate of the new APU with a built-in NPU.
Despite that, AI-based upgrades will still be a significant shift from FSR, representing the next major update in upscale technology since the launch of FSR 2. Compared to the soon-to-be-released FSR 2, an AI-assisted upgrade should theoretically improve the image quality of FSR. The details of how AMD will integrate AI into FSR remain unclear, but it might follow a similar path to what Nvidia has done with DLSS.
A major challenge with the FSR AI upgrade is hardware support. If AMD develops an AI-style FSR version for its XDNA NPU, it may only support the Ryzen 8000 series mobile CPUs, Ryzen 8000 series desktop APUs, and its existing Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs.
