What’s next after the PS5 Pro? A report from Reuters focuses on Sony’s plans beyond this fall’s new $700 system, saying that the battle to win a contract for the chip powering a future PlayStation 6 came down to AMD vs. Intel, with others like Broadcom eliminated earlier, with AMD eventually winning out.
According to Reuters, since AMD makes the chip in the PS5 and PS5 Pro, maintaining backward compatibility in a possible move was part of “months” of discussions in 2022 between executives and engineers at Sony and Intel. However, Intel’s bid was blocked because they couldn’t agree on how much profit Intel would make from each chip it would design as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) handled the manufacturing process.
Besides the recent embarrassment of crashing Raptor Lake CPUs, Intel has been a bystander in the AI chip boom and ceded manufacturing of some next-gen tech to TSMC as it attempts to rebuild its capabilities. The chipmaking division also racked up $7 billion in losses last year, and last month, the company announced 15,000 layoffs. Meanwhile, its upcoming chip plant in Ohio has been delayed, although it did secure Microsoft as a customer for its advanced 18A chip process.
While AMD has also trailed Nvidia’s leadership in the AI chip market and flagship GPUs, its data center products now make up over half of its sales. In a recent interview, AMD exec Jack Huynh said that besides merging its RDNA gaming graphics and CNDA data center efforts into a single “UDNA,” with its gaming priority set to increasing scale at lower price points.
The report says a deal could’ve produced $30 billion in revenue for Intel, which is quoted in the article saying, “We strongly disagree with this characterization but are not going to comment about any current or potential customer conversations.”
