Sony Interactive Entertainment’s upgraded PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, often referred to as PSSR 2, improves on the original upscaling model by making the AI do less.
At SIGGRAPH 2026, Daniel Craig, Principal Software Engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment, detailed the redesign behind the upgraded PSSR on PlayStation 5 Pro. Instead of expanding the neural network, the new upscaling algorithm actually functions with a reduced AI workload. The first iteration of PSSR placed almost the entire reconstruction pipeline inside a Color-Predicting Network (CPN), with the model directly predicting output color, forcing the network to learn tasks that could be handled efficiently through conventional, closed-form graphics operations. Sony Interactive Entertainment and AMD engineers found that this approach created problems ranging from HDR handling to temporal reconstruction and high upscale ratios.
For the upgraded version, Sony Interactive Entertainment restored much of the conventional reconstruction pipeline and narrowed the AI’s role to pattern recognition and decision-making. The CPN was replaced by a Kernel-Predicting Network (KPN), which predicts blend weights rather than final pixel colors. The actual blending is then directly performed.
Because the model no longer had to implicitly manipulate HDR color, it could use its capacity more efficiently. A redesigned connection to the history data also improved gradient flow, allowing the network to learn much longer temporal relationships. Sony Interactive Entertainment and AMD engineers additionally introduced an input-space elliptical Gaussian filter designed to remain effective as the upscale ratio increases, addressing the original model’s problematic 2.5x and 3x image reconstruction.
The results presented by Craig showed how the upgraded model improves image quality and temporal stability, particularly at lower input resolutions, alongside reduced GPU time and memory usage. Training time also fell dramatically, from roughly 4 GPU-months for launch PSSR to less than 1 GPU-week for PSSR 2.
An upcoming firmware update will enable the “Enhance PSSR Image Quality” toggle on PS5 Pro, allowing PSSR2 to override the original upscaling model in supported games by default. Read about it here.
