July 12th, 2024

Arm Accuracy Super Resolution

Arm introduces Arm Accuracy Super Resolution (Arm ASR) for mobile upscaling, optimizing performance by rendering frames at lower resolution and later scaling up. ASR focuses on temporal upscaling, enhancing graphics quality and power efficiency for longer battery life. The solution includes Robust Contrast-Adaptive Sharpening (RCAS) and is shared under an MIT open-source license.

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Arm has introduced "Arm Accuracy Super Resolution" (Arm ASR), an open-source solution for upscaling on mobile devices. This technique aims to enhance graphics quality while optimizing performance by rendering some frame stages at lower resolution and later scaling them up. The article discusses the benefits of upscaling techniques, such as anti-aliasing and post-processing effects like lighting and reflections. Arm ASR focuses on temporal upscaling, which combines information from multiple frames to generate higher quality images. By implementing FSR2, developers can benefit from improved GPU performance and power efficiency, leading to longer battery life on mobile devices. The solution also includes Robust Contrast-Adaptive Sharpening (RCAS) for fine detail enhancement. Arm plans to share this technology with the developer community under an MIT open-source license, encouraging experimentation and adoption. Overall, Arm ASR offers a promising solution for enhancing graphics quality on mobile platforms while maintaining performance efficiency.

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11 comments

By @kibwen - 3 months

Graphical fidelity isn't the reason I don't play mobile games. I don't play mobile games because touchscreens are terribly deficient compared to a controller, and because the monetization of mobile games is invariably psychotic.

By @rendaw - 3 months

The article lists two methods:

* Spatial - Inferring data from nearby pixels in a single frame (?) * Temporal - Inferring data from a point on previous and next frames

I guess this is super resolution in the statistical sense, rather than "AI super resolution" which would infer data from similar data in other photos/videos.

I'm surprised, I thought this was a dead area for research and AI super resolution had fully supplanted it. Are there any open source implementations of this, ex: for photography? I was digging into this a few years ago and all I could find was the commercial "PhotoAcute" which is basically dead but I somehow managed to get a key for and it... barely works.

By @meindnoch - 3 months

When did we reach such a plateau with GPU tech, that we have to resort to this fake super-resolution stuff instead of just rendering more pixels?

By @chrisjj - 3 months

> Accuracy Super Resolution

That would have been worth first checking with a native English speaker.

By @coldcode - 3 months

The one comparison example is sort of poor, as the "improved" part is bright, and the "original" part is dark and rather limited. It's hard to tell much from this.

By @miohtama - 3 months

Is this based on some acquisition ARM has done? Because the sector is very un-ARM’y.

By @a1o - 3 months

Why do results need a license?

By @KronisLV - 3 months

Honestly, I don't get why all the popular upscaling methods (DLSS, FSR, XeSS, ...) aren't integrated in all of the mainstream engines: Unity, Unreal, Godot...

As far as I'm concerned, on the end of a game developer, that should be a single checkbox in the project options, or something similarly easy to choosing between 2X and 4X AA, both on the desktop and mobile, where supported by the hardware (or simpler generic upscaling, if nothing else suffices).

The performance gains (at the expense of graphical fidelity, which may or may not be acceptable) would be staggering - you could quite literally squeeze out just enough performance to enjoy a game or an application even from older generation hardware for more modern titles.

By @DeathArrow - 3 months

Nvidia has the hardware power to use AI for upscaling. How many tensor cores do ARM socs have?

By @asdff - 3 months

So tired of the dragon chasing with gaming graphics. The fruit they are chasing today is so low hanging yet demands such powerful hardware just to do something like render a beam of light through the woods. Meanwhile the game hardly looks better than crysis outside of that, especially when you are, you know, focused on playing the game and not pixel peeping. I wish developers put more effort into compatibility and cross platform support but I guess its not the developers making the engines after all, they are kind of beholden to them.

Arm Accuracy Super Resolution

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