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|developer = [[:Category:Sony consoles|Sony]]

The '''PlayStation 4''' (PS4) is an eighth-generation console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment on November 15, 2013 and retailed for $399.99 ($432.54 in 20132018 money). It has a semi-custom 8-core AMD x86-64 Jaguar CPU at 1.6 GHz, whereas one of the cores is utilised separately only for low-power, background tasks. The CPU is shared on an APU chip with a semi-custom AMD GCN Radeon GPU. They are supported by 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM at 2.75 GHz, while 256 MB of DDR3 RAM is used only for background tasks. Notably, it is the first PlayStation console to use the [[wikipedia:x86|x86]] architecture, making it easier to program for than the [[PlayStation 3 emulators|PlayStation 3]] while also having the same architecture as PCs.

Due to the PS4's x86 architecture and FreeBSD-based operating system, emulators for the device will by and large be very unconventional. Despite the x86's instruction set being '''huge'''<ref>{{cite web | url= https://weben.archivewikipedia.org/webwiki/20130517194502/http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132032 x86_instruction_listings | title= Why is XBOX emulation premature?x86 instruction listings | Wikipedia}}</ref>, a trait that would typically lead to years of development time by emulators, it opens the ability for pre-existing hypervisors to do the heavy lifting, eliminating the need for a recompiler. There is also, as of writing this, little to no documentation on the GPU (a modified Radeon 7970M with disabled stream processors) used in the PS4's APU, and it will require a complete re-implementation by emulator developers. End-users may wish to preform a preliminary dump of the required files from their PS4 using the [https://phi.nz/orbital/tools/dumper/ Orbital Dumper]-->===Emulation issues===Even though the PS4 has an x86 CPU like normal PCs, that does not mean it'll be easy to emulate as the x86 instruction set is '''huge'''.<ref>{{cite web | url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130517194502/http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132032 | title= Why is XBOX emulation premature?}}</ref> However, nearly all of the x86 instructions are well documented (though some other specifics aren't) so the possibility is there. Another thing is that there is currently no documentation on the GPU (a modified Radeon 7970M with disabled stream processors) used in the PS4's APU. While the console has been hacked, efforts are as of now preliminary and not to the point of being able to run backups or pirated games - please don't even ask about PoC emulators until it's hacked. All that said, don't expect any functional PS4 emulators for a very long time, at least 10 years or more.