# Unleashing the Power of One-Step Diffusion based Image Super-Resolution via a Large-Scale Diffusion Discriminator

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.04224 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04224/

## Key facts

- Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Inverse problems and image restoration, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 60 of its 71 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Oct 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Inverse problems and image restoration](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/inverse-problems-and-image-restoration/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 60)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Photo-Realistic Single Image Super-Resolution Using a Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.04802/) (2016)
- [SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10257/) (2021)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Residual Channel Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.02758/) (2018)
- [ProlificDreamer: High-Fidelity and Diverse Text-to-3D Generation with Variational Score Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16213/) (2023)
- [MUSIQ: Multi-scale Image Quality Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05997/) (2021)
- [One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18828/) (2023)
- [Exploring CLIP for Assessing the Look and Feel of Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12396/) (2022)
- [Real-ESRGAN: Training Real-World Blind Super-Resolution with Pure Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10833/) (2021)
- [DPM-Solver++: Fast Solver for Guided Sampling of Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01095/) (2022)
- [Accurate Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04587/) (2015)
- [Image Quality Assessment: Unifying Structure and Texture Similarity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07728/) (2020)
- [Residual Dense Network for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08797/) (2018)
- [Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17042/) (2023)
- [On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03142/) (2022)
- [Pseudo Numerical Methods for Diffusion Models on Manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09778/) (2022)
- [Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14867/) (2024)
- [Designing a Practical Degradation Model for Deep Blind Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14006/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [OSDFace: One-Step Diffusion Model for Face Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17163/) (2024)
- [ReFIR: Grounding Large Restoration Models with Retrieval Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05601/) (2024)
- [Ultra-Low Bitrate Perceptual Image Compression with Shallow Encoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12229/) (2025)
- [HAODiff: Human-Aware One-Step Diffusion via Dual-Prompt Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19742/) (2025)
- [Improved Adversarial Diffusion Compression for Real-World Video Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00458/) (2026)
- [One-Step Residual Shifting Diffusion for Image Super-Resolution via Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13358/) (2025)
- [Joint Geometric and Trajectory Consistency Learning for One-Step Real-World Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.24240/) (2026)
- [SODiff: Semantic-Oriented Diffusion Model for JPEG Compression Artifacts Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07346/) (2025)
- [Spectral and Trajectory Regularization for Diffusion Transformer Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.06275/) (2026)
- [HonestFace: Towards Honest Face Restoration with One-Step Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18469/) (2025)
- [QArtSR: Quantization via Reverse-Module and Timestep-Retraining in One-Step Diffusion based Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05584/) (2025)
- [Light Up Your Face: A Physically Consistent Dataset and Diffusion Model for Face Fill-Light Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04300/) (2026)
- [LCUDiff: Latent Capacity Upgrade Diffusion for Faithful Human Body Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04406/) (2026)
- [TimeWeaver: Age-Consistent Reference-Based Face Restoration with Identity Preservation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22701/) (2026)
- [DVFace: Spatio-Temporal Dual-Prior Diffusion for Video Face Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14560/) (2026)
- [TUDSR: Twice Upsampling-Diffusion for Higher Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09608/) (2026)
- [Kaleido: Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design for Video Diffusion Transformers by Exploiting Latent Space Correlations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13770/) (2026)
- [Deltoris: Enabling Real-time VLA Inference in Embodied AI via Bit-level Sparsity and Speculative Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.04428/) (2026)
- [DriftSR: One-Step Real-World Image Super-Resolution via Distribution Drifting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.04819/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models have demonstrated excellent performance for real-world image super-resolution (Real-ISR), albeit at high computational costs. Most existing methods are trying to derive one-step diffusion models from multi-step counterparts through knowledge distillation (KD) or variational score distillation (VSD). However, these methods are limited by the capabilities of the teacher model, especially if the teacher model itself is not sufficiently strong. To tackle these issues, we propose a new One-Step Diffusion model with a larger-scale Diffusion Discriminator for SR, called D3SR. Our discriminator is able to distill noisy features from any time step of diffusion models in the latent space. In this way, our diffusion discriminator breaks through the potential limitations imposed by the presence of a teacher model. Additionally, we improve the perceptual loss with edge-aware DISTS (EA-DISTS) to enhance the model's ability to generate fine details. Our experiments demonstrate that, compared with previous diffusion-based methods requiring dozens or even hundreds of steps, our D3SR attains comparable or even superior results in both quantitative metrics and qualitative evaluations. Moreover, compared with other methods, D3SR achieves at least 3× faster inference speed and reduces parameters by at least 30%. We will release code and models at https://github.com/JianzeLi-114/D3SR.