Graphics processing unit[edit]
GPU specifications[23]
1152 Shaders
72 Texture mapping units
32 Raster operators
18 Compute units
8 Asynchronous compute units (64 queues)
1.84 Teraflops
The graphics processing unit (GPU) is AMD's GPGPU-capable Radeon GCN architecture, consisting of 18 compute units (CUs) for a total of 1,152 cores (64 cores per CU), that produces a theoretical peak performance of 1.84 TFLOPS.[24] This processing power can be used for graphics, physics simulation, or a combination of the two, or any other tasks suited for general purpose compute. It is a customized version of AMD's 7870 GPU, with 2 CUs disabled.[25]
Though based on AMD's GCN architecture,
there are several known differentiating factors between the PS4's GPU and current-gen PC graphics cards featuring first-gen GCN architecture:
- An additional dedicated 20 GB/s bus that bypasses L1 and L2 GPU cache for direct system memory access, reducing synchronisation challenges when performing fine-grain GPGPU compute tasks.
- L2 cache support for simultaneous graphical and asynchronous compute tasks through the addition of a 'volatile' bit tag, providing control over cache invalidation, reducing the impact of simultaneous graphical and general purpose compute operations.
- An upgrade from 2 to 64 sources for compute commands, improving compute parallelism and execution priority control. This enables finer-grain control over load-balancing of compute commands including superior game-engine integration.
[26]
