# Efficient and Accurate Quantized Image Super-Resolution on Mobile NPUs, Mobile AI & AIM 2022 challenge: Report

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.05910 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05910/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 57 of its 95 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Nov 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 57)

- [SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restarts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03983/) (2016)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [Searching for MobileNetV3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02244/) (2019)
- [Quantization and Training of Neural Networks for Efficient Integer-Arithmetic-Only Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05877/) (2017)
- [Enhanced Deep Residual Networks for Single Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02921/) (2017)
- [Image Super-Resolution Using Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1501.00092/) (2014)
- [MnasNet: Platform-Aware Neural Architecture Search for Mobile](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.11626/) (2018)
- [Accurate Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04587/) (2015)
- [RepVGG: Making VGG-style ConvNets Great Again](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.03697/) (2021)
- [FBNet: Hardware-Aware Efficient ConvNet Design via Differentiable Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03443/) (2018)
- [AdaBelief Optimizer: Adapting Stepsizes by the Belief in Observed Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07468/) (2020)
- [ZeroQ: A Novel Zero Shot Quantization Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00281/) (2020)
- [Bi-Real Net: Enhancing the Performance of 1-bit CNNs With Improved Representational Capability and Advanced Training Algorithm](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00278/) (2018)
- [MetaPruning: Meta Learning for Automatic Neural Network Channel Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.10258/) (2019)
- [DSLR-Quality Photos on Mobile Devices with Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.02470/) (2017)
- [Quantization Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09464/) (2019)
- [FBNetV2: Differentiable Neural Architecture Search for Spatial and Channel Dimensions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05565/) (2020)
- [Structured Pruning of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.08571/) (2015)
- [Replacing Mobile Camera ISP with a Single Deep Learning Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05509/) (2020)
- [Trained Quantization Thresholds for Accurate and Efficient Fixed-Point Inference of Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08066/) (2019)
- [Diverse Branch Block: Building a Convolution as an Inception-like Unit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13425/) (2021)
- [NTIRE 2020 Challenge on Real-World Image Super-Resolution: Methods and Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01996/) (2020)
- [AI Benchmark: All About Deep Learning on Smartphones in 2019](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06663/) (2019)
- [AI Benchmark: Running Deep Neural Networks on Android Smartphones](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.01109/) (2018)
- [Learning Filter Basis for Convolutional Neural Network Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.08932/) (2019)
- [Rendering Natural Camera Bokeh Effect with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05698/) (2020)
- [Residual Local Feature Network for Efficient Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07514/) (2022)
- [Seven ways to improve example-based single image super resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.02228/) (2015)
- [NTIRE 2020 Challenge on Real Image Denoising: Dataset, Methods and Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04117/) (2020)
- [DiracNets: Training Very Deep Neural Networks Without Skip-Connections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.00388/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Spatially-Adaptive Feature Modulation for Efficient Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13800/) (2023)
- [See More Details: Efficient Image Super-Resolution by Experts Mining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03412/) (2024)
- [Make RepVGG Greater Again: A Quantization-aware Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01593/) (2022)
- [DIPNet: Efficiency Distillation and Iterative Pruning for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07018/) (2023)
- [Real-Time 4K Super-Resolution of Compressed AVIF Images. AIS 2024 Challenge Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16484/) (2024)
- [SAM-DiffSR: Structure-Modulated Diffusion Model for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17133/) (2024)
- [AsConvSR: Fast and Lightweight Super-Resolution Network with Assembled Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03387/) (2023)
- [Bicubic++: Slim, Slimmer, Slimmest -- Designing an Industry-Grade Super-Resolution Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02126/) (2023)
- [QuickSRNet: Plain Single-Image Super-Resolution Architecture for Faster Inference on Mobile Platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04336/) (2023)
- [SRSR: Enhancing Semantic Accuracy in Real-World Image Super-Resolution with Spatially Re-Focused Text-Conditioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22534/) (2025)
- [LMLT: Low-to-high Multi-Level Vision Transformer for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03516/) (2024)
- [Addressing Image Authenticity When Cameras Use Generative AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.21879/) (2026)
- [Towards Clip-Free Quantized Super-Resolution Networks: How to Tame Representative Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11365/) (2023)
- [Compressed Domain Prior-Guided Video Super-Resolution for Cloud Gaming Content](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01773/) (2025)
- [Efficient INT8 Single-Image Super-Resolution via Deployment-Aware Quantization and Teacher-Guided Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20291/) (2026)
- [QuantSR+: Pushing the Limit of Quantized Image Super-Resolution Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22351/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Image super-resolution is a common task on mobile and IoT devices, where one often needs to upscale and enhance low-resolution images and video frames. While numerous solutions have been proposed for this problem in the past, they are usually not compatible with low-power mobile NPUs having many computational and memory constraints. In this Mobile AI challenge, we address this problem and propose the participants to design an efficient quantized image super-resolution solution that can demonstrate a real-time performance on mobile NPUs. The participants were provided with the DIV2K dataset and trained INT8 models to do a high-quality 3X image upscaling. The runtime of all models was evaluated on the Synaptics VS680 Smart Home board with a dedicated edge NPU capable of accelerating quantized neural networks. All proposed solutions are fully compatible with the above NPU, demonstrating an up to 60 FPS rate when reconstructing Full HD resolution images. A detailed description of all models developed in the challenge is provided in this paper.