Arm ASR is available now, mobile upscaler aims to be the NVIDIA DLSS for mobile gaming

Last year, we reported on Arm announcing its new Arm Accuracy Super Resolution, or Arm ASR, upscaling solution for gaming on mobile devices. Based on AMD's open-source FSR 2.2, Arm brought its new ASR technology to GDC last week, announcing that it was now available for game developers to play around with.

The open-source Arm ASR Experience kit includes an Unreal Engine plug-in for the complete source code and various tutorials and samples. In the official announcement, Arm notes that a Unity engine plug-in will be available later this year.

"With Arm ASR, you can easily improve frames per second, enhance visual quality, and prevent thermal throttling for smoother, longer gameplay," the company writes. Based on AMD's FSR 2 technology, which considers motion vectors and data, Arm has developed ASR for upscaling from sub-1080p resolutions.

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Performance uplifts using Arm ASR's various modes, image credit: Arm.

Using a mobile device with a 2800x1260 resolution and Arm Immortalis-G720 GPU, we see the performance uplift when Arm ASR is enabled - which can reach as high as 86.9% when using the aggressive Performance Mode on Arm's in-house Unreal Engine 5.4 'Mori' tech demo. This upscales the image from 630p to 1260p using 2X upscaling, boosting 19 FPS performance to 33 FPS.

Using the Quality Mode, which upscales the image from 840p to 1260p using 1.5X upscaling, we see a more modest performance increase of around 17%. Arm notes that the Performance Mode delivers image quality "almost identical to the original scene," which is a bold claim. Traditionally, AMD's FSR 2 has struggled to provide excellent results at lower resolutions like 1080p; however, artifacts will be much harder to spot with the smaller screen sizes and increased pixel density of mobile devices.

Technology like Arm ASR is good for developers and gamers alike, as upscaling technologies (AI-powered or not) will become increasingly critical in delivering high-end gaming experiences on mobile devices and portable gaming handhelds.