A job ad strongly suggests that Sony may be going for something completely different with its next-generation PlayStation…

AMD was a supplier to both Sony and Microsoft for the previous generation of consoles, with ‘the Reds’ providing both companies with custom graphics chips and processors. While Microsoft is said to have continued its partnership with AMD (the next-generation Xbox was in the news earlier today via a new rumor; we’ll just say “Zen 5 architecture”), Nintendo used a combination for the Switch (graphics chip from Nvidia and processor came from ARM) and will likely follow a similar path for its successor, while Sony may go in a completely new direction. Strongly hypothetical, because we’ve heard things to the contrary before.

The job posting is for a system software developer to work on cross-architecture program support at Sony’s Tokyo office. The candidate should have experience in C and C++; be familiar with recently released processor architectures; have experience in assembler development on one of these architectures; be familiar with JIT and AOT technologies (the translation may be a bit off, as the ad is in Japanese); and finally, knowledge of English is expected, as he/she will be required to interpret technical documents and communicate with foreign developers.

This does not mean that Sony is suddenly abandoning the x86 processors it has been using, as there was a leak in February about possible specifications for the PlayStation 6, and there was no mention of an ARM processor, but the tried-and-tested AMD. So it’s possible that this is more of an R&D job offer for future technologies. Industry events don’t really suggest that a big turnaround is coming…

So until then, it’s best to wait, because if the industry starts to try significantly different directions with hardware, we’ll report on it.

Source: Reddit, Greenhouse