AMD's next-gen FidelityFX Super Resolution technology known as FSR 4 will be leveraging AI in a grander scale to improve visual fidelity.
AMD Finally Ready To Adopt AI For FidelityFX Super Resolution Technology: FSR 4 To Enhance Image Quality & Improve Efficiency
Talking to AMD's SVP & GM of Computing and Graphics Business Group, Jack Huynh, during IFA 2024, Tomshardware managed to confirm some details of the next-generation FidelityFX Super Resolution suite and it looks like the red team is finally ready to adopt AI for upscaling which the competition has been using for the past few generations.
The adoption of AI in the Radeon architecture has been anticipated by many but many had doubts if AMD would use it for use cases such as its FSR tech. Last year, AMD stated that they had different plans for AI beyond upscaling. The specific quote from David Wang stated that accelerators for AI inferencing should be used to make games for advanced and fun.
We believe that inference accelerators that should be implemented in gamers' GPUs should be used to make games more advanced and fun.
AMD SVP of Radeon Technologies Group, David Wang (Machine Translated via 4Gamer)
However, earlier this year, AMD teased that it was going to adopt AI for its next-generation FSR tech as 2024 will mark a huge deployment year for them.
2024 for us is a huge year because we have spent so many years developing hardware and software capabilities for AI. We've just completed AI enabling our entire portfolios so cloud, edge, PCs, our embedded devices, our gaming devices, we're enabling our gaming devices to upscale using AI and 2024 is really a huge deployment year for us so now the bedrock's there, the capabilities are there.
It seems like the new management at the AMD Radeon division has now taken the covers off of their surprise tech which is FSR 4 and that will indeed incorporate AI. For reference, NVIDIA has leveraged AI in its DLSS technologies since 2018 and managed to fine-tune and optimize it in the subsequent versions with DLSS Frame-Gen and DLSS Ray-Reconstruction also leveraging full use of AI to deliver better visual fidelity. Meanwhile, Intel's XeSS has incorporated AI through the use of XMX accelerators and further refined it in the latest 1.3.1 SDK.
AMD itself has been enhancing FSR 3.1 and AFMF using AI but it looks like the next step is to harness both software and hardware-based AI additions to deliver a better experience to gamers. With FSR 4, AMD isn't just going to deliver better upscaling but offer both Frame generation and frame interpolation to extend not just battery times on handhelds but also to enhance visuals and performance on discrete GPUs.
On the handheld side, my number one priority is battery life. If you look at the ASUS ROG Ally or the Lenovo Legion Go, it’s just that the battery life is not there. I need multiple hours. I need to play a Wukong for three hours, not 60 minutes. This is where frame generation and interpolation [come in], so this is the FSR4 that we're adding.
So now we're going AI-based frame generation, frame interpolation, and the idea is increased efficiency to maximize battery life.
Jack Huynh (AMD SVP & GM) - via Tomshardware
AMD recently rolled out a brand new SoC for the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro which features PSSR or PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution technology. This is a fully AI-enabled upscaling technology and it is highly likely that it is based on the same fundamentals and algorithms as FSR 4 but with some console-specific optimizations. The SoC also incorporates an upgraded RT engine thanks to the backporting of RDNA 4 technologies on this specific chip.
AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution "FSR 4" technology is expected to debut next year with the launch of AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs which will mark a new era of the Radeon graphics segment. The lineup will start by aiming at the mainstream segment first and move towards the unification of both RDNA and CDNA families for consumers and data centers under the UDNA series. Expect AMD to share more GPU updates in the future.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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