AMD 4700s CPU . Photo by @aschilling

Hacker ZNullPtr has reported that his PS5 donation drive has been making progress, and the PS5 R&D group already acquired one out of the 3 expected PS5 prototypes. Such prototype devices are expected to be useful in PS5 reverse engineering research, due to being early versions of the hardware (and no, you don’t find those easily). Additionally, the team are looking to buy 4700s kits, which could be useful in reverse engineering the PS5, due to their similar, possibly identical, APUs.

ZNullPtr has clarified that they’ve reached roughly 80% of the initial donation goal so far.

I'd like to thank all the donors again.😄

It was a good run, still a bit short but hopefully enough will filter in slowly over the next few weeks to cover it + payment processing fees.

We have one prototype (of 3), waiting on potential 4700S units as well.

Will post updates.

— Z (@Znullptr) January 22, 2023

What’s that PS5 Donation drive and what are 4700s?

ZNullPtr has been one of the few hackers openly looking into PS5 hacks since the PS5 Kernel exploit was disclosed last year, and he recently started a donation drive in order to purchase some specific hardware in order to look deeper into the PS5 APU.

PS5 Prototypes look like the Test kits (pictured above), and, generally speaking, like retail PS5s with additional warning disclaimers on them

Beside the PS5 prototypes, they are looking at buying some 4700s motherboards/CPUs.

It is believed that 4700s are based on repurposed PS5 APUs. This is what TomsHardware says on these kits:

How did such an odd product come to market? At last count, Sony has sold more than 10 million PS5 consoles, each with its own special custom ‘Oberon’ chip designed by AMD. These custom chips come with eight Zen 2 cores and a powerful custom RDNA graphics engine, but an untold number of chips suffer from defects during the manufacturing processes, meaning that they won’t function correctly (if at all), typically resulting in a trip to the trash bin. Sometimes the chips simply can’t meet certain clock speed criteria. Regardless of the issue with these chips, they can’t be used in a console, but AMD appears to have found a way to sell the defective silicon by creating a system board with most of the key components you need to craft small systems.

AMD However hasn’t confirmed that the CPU of the 4700s is based on the PS5 one, but the author of that review (and other reviewers) is pretty convinced it is. They say:

AMD has declined to comment on whether or not the AMD 4700S chip consists of defective PS5 silicon, but the identical chip packaging and completely unique system requirements (like GDDR6) make it clear. AMD has also conspicuously avoided using Ryzen branding.

There is an expectation in the PS5 hacking community that 4700s CPU could be similar enough to the PS5 that investigating it will yield more information on the PS5 APU, at the hardware level. It is possible hackers want to attempt hardware glitch attacks on the CPU.

How to Donate to ZNullPtr

It’s worth emphasizing once more that people who donate to ZNullPtr for this endeavor should basically expect nothing in return. There’s no guarantee, if the donation goal is reached, that the research will yield anything useful. There’s actually no guarantee the hacker will actually use the money for PS5 research, except for the fact that he’s been a trusted dev of the PS4/PS5 community for years. So, it’s all based on trust, for the folks who released the PS4 9.00 Jailbreak.

All donation links are on ZNullPtr’s profile on twitter

(I am not linking directly to his various donation links, in case he updates them)