AlphaAtlas
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2018
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A new patent filed by Sony in Japan suggests that the Playstation 5 (or whatever Sony's next console is called) could implement backwards compatibility for PS4 titles. While the patent doesn't specifically mention the Playstation 5 itself, a Japenese blog pointed out that it makes multiple references to the x86 architecture, and previous rumors suggest that the PS5 will use an AMD x86 CPU + GPU combo like the PS4 and PS4 Pro. In addition to spoofing processor details to mimic the old PS4 SoC, the patent mentions that even processing speed can break time-sensitive operations "legacy" applications could implement, meaning a new processor would need specific measures to ensure perfect backwards compatibility. If all this seems familiar, that's because Sony issued a seemingly unrelated patent dealing with emulation and "remastering" late last year. The techniques described in the 2019 patent likely wouldn't work for PS3 and PS2 games, as those consoles don't share the PS4's architecture. Thanks to TechSpot for spotting the patent.
Differences in the performance of hardware components between the new device and the legacy device may cause synchronization errors in the new device. Such performance differences may arise, for example, due to differences in the capabilities of the central processing unit (CPU) of the new device to the legacy device. For example, if the CPU of the new device is faster than the CPU of the legacy device, the CPU may prematurely overwrite the data that is still being used by another component of the new device.
Differences in the performance of hardware components between the new device and the legacy device may cause synchronization errors in the new device. Such performance differences may arise, for example, due to differences in the capabilities of the central processing unit (CPU) of the new device to the legacy device. For example, if the CPU of the new device is faster than the CPU of the legacy device, the CPU may prematurely overwrite the data that is still being used by another component of the new device.