While at GDC, I had the chance to sit down and speak with AMD’s chief graphics product architect, John Gustafson. While he remained silent when it came to Microsoft’s next generation Xbox, he had a lot to say about Sony’s recently announced PlayStation 4.
“The PlayStation 4 blew me away but I’m conscious about being too positive about it because of course we have other partners that are competing,” said Gustafson at GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco.
During their big PlayStation 4 reveal back in February, Sony revealed that rather than creating their own hardware like they did with the PlayStation 3, the PlayStation 4 will adopt AMD created chipsets.
AMD also provides the graphics horsepower behind the Wii U, a fact Gustafson was quick to point out when asked about his feelings on the PlayStation 4 and the fact that it’s the only true next-generation console that’s been revealed so far. “Of course there is the Wii U too, we have AMD parts in there,” said Gustafson.
He also seems to be very impressed with the specifications Sony has revealed so far about the PlayStation 4.
“It looks like they did an extremely good job of the engineering… The CPU and the GPU are on the same chip, which solves a lot of the problems (you don’t have to toss things over to a graphics card and try to get them back and forth).”
Going into specifics, Gustafson explained how he expects next generation physics engines on the PlayStation to be more realistic than we’ve ever seen before. He also emphasized that the console’s 8 GBs of ram will give developers a significant amount of breathing room when it comes to game development.
Gustafson also expanded on the potential he thinks the PS4 has when it comes to purposes outside of gaming, especially if it were used as some sort of server. According to him, all it would take is a few modifications and you’d have an amazing computer platform for all kinds of purposes.
Since the PS4′s architecture is so similar to that of a high-end PC, once hackers get their hands on the actual console, I imagine it won’t be long before they find a way to turn it into an actual computer, allowing it to become more than just a game console.
Interesting article, though its not as some of God's special children up and around the net believe, one about developers praising the PS4's architecture. John Gustafson is clearly indentified as AMD’s chief graphics product architect in the article itself, so it is an article about him gushing over his own creation. Bear in mind, he is also the one that developed the new next generation's MS consoles chipsets as well.
What is interesting though is the ease in which he believes hackers could convert the P4 to an fully functioning computer, so either Sony is making the PS4 more open, or AMD didn't really care too terribly much about creating a very securable console.
