The PS4 Pro has a variety of new hardware and software tricks, all of which work to make the console punch above its weight, and deliver games that look substantially better than they do on the standard PS4 system. One of these tricks is delta color compression, which helps to maximize memory bandwidth during games development.
In a recent interview we had with Don Williamson, former developer at Fable development studio Lionhead, and currently the Owner and Consultant Engine Programmer at Celtoys, we decided to ask him about the delta color compression technology, and how it might impact the performance of games running on PS4 Pro.
We also asked him about the other features that are making their way to the PS4 Pro from the AMD Roadmap, such as the ability to run two FP16 operations concurrently, and the integration of a work scheduler for increased efficiency. According to Williamson, these are fairly low level improvements that shouldn’t have much of an impact on the performance of games.
“These are just a bunch of low-level technical details that will allow us to squeeze more out of the hardware. Not too much; but enough to gain maybe half a millisecond here and there,” he said.
On the whole, then, it sounds like the cumulative impact of smaller improvements like these is what makes the PS4 Pro tick, and makes it a far more impressive console than you would expect it to be.
