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taikamya on 26 March 2016
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There is some sense to it. AMD Zen already have been previewed to have 4 to 10 cores, 14nm and 30% increase in IPC over Godavari. This should put Zen to the level of Skylake in IPC. Polaris is a whole new architecture, not just a 14nm refresh of current GCN.

Zen is also supposed to support HBM as a primary memory which would allow HBM to be the total memory and the CPU shared memory.

So yeah, I expect the Zen APU to be at least 30% faster clock-by-clock than current Steamroller APU's, and they're already 10% faster than Jaguar's, whilst keeping power-consumption and heat to a minimum.

IMHO:
Sony will almost definitely release a slim PS4, if they name it PS4K or whatever, good, I don't care about naming and most people don't too. If the PS4.5 is just a refresh 14nm, better looking, cooler, with more HDD space, awesome. Bring it on. This DO NOT appear to be the case.

However pretty this sounds, there are a couple of mistakes here.

1) It's not that easy to upscale graphics. Upscaling images is one thing, another totally different is to upscale heavy graphics. Example: Buy a GTX970 and game at 4K. You can upscale it right in the control panel. The GPU takes a serious hit in performance. It's lighter than gaming at actual 4K, but it's definitely NOT performance-hit-free.

2) If it's a brand new console, not just a refresh with new name, then it will absolutely NOT have 100% compatibility with PS4. It's a totally new architecture, it's a totally new design, the IS is totally new, this will absolutely be a headache for developers. If a game is release for the PS4 it will need a compatibility patch for the PS4.5 and vice-versa. Not only that, but it's phisically impossible to run a game equally in both machines.

3) Games are heavily optimized softwares, a game with compatilibity patch will not run well in a environment it was not supposed to work on. If however they program two different executables from the same source, the game can run fine, but another compile is going to take a major space. Not impossible, but definitely another headache for developers.

4) Studios are almost always profit-oriented and will not make a game for two similar platforms for the same company. The contract itself will be different for every SDK. If Sony makes a global contract and a global SDK, studios may be able to focus in both consoles, but quality is not guaranteed. Otherwise studios will only focus in one platform, making the other platform a rotten apple and eventually killing it.

5) This opens a great window of opportunity for M$. They're already behind this generation so why waste effort on it? They can shift the focus entirely to the next-gen and release a superb console in 2 years. Sony will not release the PS5 in 2 years(from the release of PS4.5) and make the fan base utterly upset. Microsoft will have a loner game against itself it they play their cards right, while Sony still lingers from PS4/4.5 success. If Sony decides to compete with a PS5 in 2 years, then the PS4.5 will be a waste and they will kill it shortly, making a waste of money and R&D.

TL;DR
It's plausible for Sony to make this console, it's possible for it to output 4K(although the PS4 is already capable of that, just read your goddamn manual!), it can game better than PS4. It won't be totally compatible with the PS4 if it's a totally new system(otherwise it will, if it's just a refresh), and it will most likely kill a PS5 plans in the making for at least 4 years.