Sony Interactive Entertainment's upgraded PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution technology (commonly known as PSSR 2) improves upon the original super-resolution model by assigning less work to AI.
At SIGGRAPH 2026, Daniel Craig, Principal Software Engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment, detailed the redesign behind the upgraded PSSR on PlayStation 5 Pro. The new super-resolution algorithm does not scale up the neural network; instead, it operates by reducing the workload on AI. The original PSSR delegated nearly the entire reconstruction process to the Color Prediction Network (CPN), with the model directly predicting output colors, forcing the network to learn tasks that could have been handled more efficiently through traditional closed-form graphics operations. Engineers from Sony Interactive Entertainment and AMD found that this approach led to a series of issues ranging from HDR processing to temporal reconstruction and high-magnification super-resolution.
In the upgraded version, Sony Interactive Entertainment has restored most of the traditional reconstruction pipeline, reducing AI's role to pattern recognition and decision-making. The CPN has been replaced by a Kernel Prediction Network (KPN), which predicts blending weights rather than final pixel colors, with the actual blending operation performed directly.
Since the model no longer needs to implicitly handle HDR color, it can utilize its capacity more efficiently. Redesigned connections with historical data have also improved gradient flow, enabling the network to learn longer temporal relationships. Engineers from Sony Interactive Entertainment and AMD have also introduced an input-space elliptical Gaussian filter designed to remain effective as the super-resolution scaling factor increases, addressing issues with the original model during 2.5x and 3x image reconstruction.
Results presented by Craig show that the upgraded model delivers improvements in both image quality and temporal stability, especially at lower input resolutions, while also reducing GPU time and memory usage. Training time has also dropped significantly, from approximately 4 GPU months for the original PSSR to less than 1 GPU week for PSSR 2.
An upcoming firmware update will enable the "Enhanced PSSR Image Quality" toggle on PS5 Pro, allowing PSSR 2 to override the original super-resolution model by default in supported games.