PS4 Rumour: Sony Files Patent For Dynamic Content Switching Between Architecturally Distinct GPUs

[HoloDust]

Hm, the way I understood it (from reading the patent) it switches from high-powered to low powered (and vice versa) depending on load:

6. The apparatus of claim 5 wherein the just-in-time compiler is configured to perform a context switch from the high power GPU to the low power GPU if the high power GPU is the active GPU and the high power GPU is operating at a processing capacity that is less than or equal to the maximum processing capacity of the low power GPU.

7. The apparatus of claim 5 wherein the just-in-time compiler is configured to perform a context switch from the low power GPU to the high power GPU if the low power GPU is the active GPU, the low power GPU is operating at its maximum processing capacity, and a frame render time for the apparatus is decreasing.

.....

10.g) performing a context switch between the active GPU and the inactive GPU, wherein the active GPU becomes inactive and the inactive GPU becomes active to process a next frame of the sequence of frames

If I understood that well, if you're inside, for example, room and that scene is running at say 60fps on low power GPU, and you start rotating, window (or open door) comes into screen revealing outside and thus increasing scene complexity, low power GPU is at it's max, and time between frames starts to increase (frame rate dropping), it will switch to high power GPU.