PlayStation 5 to increase energy efficiency, but only if users adhere to it

In a letter open to the public, Jim Ryan, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, said that PlayStation "unites with the UN" to fight climate change. The statement alluded to improvements made to the PlayStation 5 to make it more energy efficient, but Ryan first insisted that it was essential to take into account the carbon footprint of the consoles while sharing some of the PlayStation 4's technological details to reduce its footprint.

At SIE, we made significant commitments and efforts to reduce the power consumption of the PS4 by using efficient technologies such as the System-on-Chip architecture with a high-performance graphics processor, reduced size scale of power and energy. backup modes such as Suspend-to-RAM. For context, we estimate that the carbon emissions we have avoided to date are already rising to nearly 16 million metric tonnes, reaching 29 million metric tonnes over the next 10 years (equivalent to the Danish nation's CO2 emissions in 2017). .

If the interaction of technology with power consumption (and battery life) interests you, pay attention to what Sony is saying here. These points – system-on-chip architecture with integrated graphics, speed reduction (which means moving the manufacturing process to a smaller scale measured in nanometers), and energy saving modes – are what You have to look in all kinds of functions, from game consoles to desktops. PC to mobile phones.

When you see these technologies, expect reduced power and (if available) longer battery life. When you see one or more of these technologies missingexpect the opposite: we have reached a stage of electronic design where small choices are important, and seemingly minor architectural differences, such as graphics (or Wi-Fi) embedded in the CPU (instead of being provided from a device).

To return to the PS5's new power-saving feature, Ryan announced that it would allow much lower power consumption than PS4 in suspended mode. According to Ryan, this feature would save up to 1,000 US homes in energy if a million PS5 users allow it, implying that this feature will not only be optional, but probably turned off. by default.

The PlayStation 5 is expected to ship in 2020 with an eight-core Ryzen "Zen 2" processor and an AMD Radeon graphics processor with ray tracing support. It should also include a solid state storage, which is a welcome change, especially in terms of game backup and load time. I remember being a cowboy and having replaced the classic hard drive of my Playstation 3 with an Intel X-25M SSD many years ago, which has reduced Dragon Age: Origins save time from 80 seconds to three or four seconds. In the spring, Sony showed Wired similar results but much more modern, reducing the loading time Spider Man 15 seconds on a PS4 Pro at 0.8 seconds on a development kit with SSD.