Seventh CPU Core Of Sony PlayStation 4 May Be Opened To Developers

Documentation from a middleware company shows that developers will be given additional access to the CPU resources of the Sony PlayStation 4, which may result to better performance for upcoming games. The latest update details of the FMOD audio tool released in the middle of November showed that access to the 7th core will be opened up by the company to developers.

Speculations emerged in a number of online game communities, like NeoGAF, after the data was uncovered at the Beyond3D developer forum. The note hints at the possibility that Sony made a critical back-end modification to the system software of the PS4 allowing games on the platform to use more of the resources of the processor.

Seventh CPU Core Of Sony PlayStation 4 May Be Opened To Developers - image credit: cnet.com

The Sony PlayStation 4 features an 8-core AMG Jaguar processor clocked at 1.6 GHz. System operations uses two of the cores of the processor together with around 3.5 GB of the memory. The seventh CPU core of the Xbox One was opened for developers by Microsoft last January. This is partly the reason why the games released this year offered better performance compared to the games released a year ago.

The frame-rates and resolution on the PS4 and the Xbox One have been similar to each other for this year. There are instances when no significant differences were noted in the two systems. This can be seen in a number of games released for both systems, like Battlefield Hardline and Star Wars Battlefront where PSA had 900p while the Xbox One had 720p, Batman Arkham Knight and Metal Gear Solid 5 with 1080p for the PS4 and 900p for the Xbox One, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 where the PS4 had 1080p while Xbox One was from 900p to 1080p.

It remains uncertain if added access to the CPU of the Sony PlayStation 4 will increase the gap between the two systems.

Posted by George Daniels on Tuesday December 01 2015, 10:34 AM EST. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Technology. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0