Arm Neural Super Sampling brings AI-powered DLSS-like upscaling to mobile devices

Arm is bringing DLSS-like AI Super Resolution to mobile gaming with its new and impressive Arm Neural Super Sampling (NSS) technology. It builds on Arm Accuracy Super Resolution (Arm ASR) technology that is already available, improving image fidelity and performance by leveraging neural accelerators on Arm GPUs that are on track to launch sometime in 2026.

Even though the hardware for this is still a year away, the company is all-in on bringing AI-powered rendering to mobile gamers on day one, as NSS already has its own Unreal Engine plugin with PC-based Vulkan emulation and Vulkan ML extensions. The NSS model, which Arm says delivers DLSS 2-like image quality on a low-power mobile device, is compact and open-source.

Arm notes that developers and companies like Enduring Games, Epic Games, NetEase Games, Sumo Digital, Tencent Games, and Traverse Research are already working to add NSS support to games and apps. As a mobile-focused tech, it's designed to reduce GPU workloads by up to 50% while maintaining native-like image fidelity.

Arm adds that using NSS to upscale from 540p to 1080p has a latency cost of just 4ms, with the company's Enchanted Castle demo showcasing the quality of the output it delivers. With native-like image quality, NSS can be used to boost efficiency or push mobile gaming visuals to new heights.

"Developers can save up to 50% of the GPU workload compared with rendering the full frame using traditional methods, and either bank that saving to reduce the overall power consumption of their game, spend it on delivering a higher frame rate, or increase the quality of the visuals," Arm writes. "With NSS, developers can use AI to preserve surface detail, lighting, and motion clarity, giving them the flexibility to balance visual fidelity with energy efficiency depending on their game's needs."

Even more exciting is that Arm is also working on Neural Frame Rate Upscaling, its version of DLSS Frame Generation, as well as Neural Super Sampling and Denoising technology, its version of DLSS Ray Reconstruction, to enable real-time path tracing on mobile devices.

The company's existing Arm Accuracy Super Resolution (Arm ASR) technology is based on AMD's open-source FSR 2; however, this new variant looks to be an AI-enhanced extension of ASR in the same way FSR 4 is an AI-enhanced version of FSR 3.1. With AMD's impressive AI-powered FSR 4 currently limited to its desktop RDNA 4 GPUs, it's surprising to see Arm pull ahead on mobile rendering, as AMD's APUs have yet to adopt neural rendering technologies for gaming.