Pristine_Condition
Member
AMD's higher-end 7xxx series cards added an H.264 encoder. I'd imagine it's that or a derivative.
I'm doubtful that it has anything to do with that, for a few reasons. In the presentation, Cerny called it "dedicated hardware" a couple of times, with a hint strongly suggesting that it would be able to run even in the standby/low-power mode of the PS4. So it's likely a separate chip, which works with that secondary (likely ARM) processor and the HDD in that low-power mode. Without too much wild speculation, it's pretty easy to come up with many ideas why being able to use this dedicated compressor/decompressor in PS4's standby/low-power mode, or entirely in the background while playing games, would be useful.
And frankly, I can't imagine Sony going out-of-house for this chip since this is something that represents a core competency within the larger company and when they've got so many of their own designs from the camera division to pick and choose from.