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

[JEMC]

Scoobes said:

slowmo said:
I don't think this patent can hold up personally anyway, this is already done with CPU's in devices such as the HTC One X. I would suggest AMD themselves would refute it given their discrete and APU pairings they're pushing.

Doesn't the OneX just use the Tegra3 or Snapdragon chip based on region/model rather than actively switching chips?

And the APU and discrete pairings AMD push are based on GPUs with the same or very similar architecture (effectively using crossfire). This patent seems to describe a way of switching between two very different GPU architectures in the background. I don't think anyone else has really done this.

There was(is) one Co that tried it, Lucid with its Lucid Hydra chip that allowed you to use cards with different architectures, even mixing cards from Nvidia and AMD at the same time.

If I remember well, it had the same problem that SLI/Xfire: it depends too much on drivers, something that won't happen on a console.