Although AMD has always played second-fiddle to Intel in the desktop PC space, when it comes to consoles, it's been far more prevalent, with graphics cores in most of the modern-day consoles, and a Jaguar CPU in the PS4. That trend will continue with the PS5 it seems, as we're told that Sony developers have been playing around with Ryzen CPU cores to see how they might work in a potential future-generation Sony console.
AMD's Ryzen CPUs have been one of the most impressive hardware developments AMD has put together in the best part of a decade. They offer incredible multithreaded performance and gave Intel such a kick up the behind that it actually increased its core counts of its new processors just to stay competitive. An argument could certainly be made that AMD's top of the line, Threadripper chips, are still the most powerful multithreaded CPUs in the world. And at less than half the price of their Intel counterparts too.
Any future PlayStation console would be unlikely to use the current-generation Ryzen hardware in its design. It would be much more likely to be based on the upcoming 7nm Zen 2 architecture, which isn't slated for a debut until 2019. However, Sony has reportedly been playing around with Ryzen 1000-series chips just to see what they're capable of. Compared to the PS4's Jaguar cores, they are far, far more powerful.
It's not been an easy process though. Getting Ryzen hardware working with Sony developmental tools takes some work, as Phoronix explains.
What will be interesting to see is whether Sony eventually leverages both AMD CPUs and GPUs to craft a new-generation system. If combined with high-speed high-bandwidth-memory (HBM) of some sort and a new-gen Vega core, any potential new-generation PlayStation console would be very powerful indeed.
Still way behind new PCs, but still. Powerful stuff for a home console.
