QuantSR+: Pushing the Limit of Quantized Image Super-Resolution Networks

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Qin, Haotong, Ma, Xudong, Liu, Xianglong, Luo, Jie, Guo, Jinyang, Magno, Michele, Zhang, Yulun
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Qin, Haotong
Ma, Xudong
Liu, Xianglong
Luo, Jie
Guo, Jinyang
Magno, Michele
Zhang, Yulun
author_facet Qin, Haotong
Ma, Xudong
Liu, Xianglong
Luo, Jie
Guo, Jinyang
Magno, Michele
Zhang, Yulun
contents Low-bit quantization is widely used to compress super-resolution (SR) models and reduce storage and computation costs for deployment on resource-limited devices. However, when SR models are pushed to ultra-low precision (2-4 bits), performance can drop sharply due to diminished representational capacity and the detail-sensitive nature of SR. To address these issues, we propose QuantSR+, a unified framework that improves quantization operators, network design, and training optimization, achieving better trade-offs between accuracy and efficiency than prior low-bit SR methods. QuantSR+ mainly relies on three technical contributions: (1) Redistribution-driven Bit Determination (RBD), which reshapes quantization distributions in both forward and backward passes to preserve representation fidelity; (2) Quantized Slimmable Architecture (QSA), which begins with an over-parameterized model and progressively prunes less critical blocks to meet efficiency budgets while pushing the accuracy performance; and (3) Slimming-guided Function-localized Distillation (SFD), which enforces block-aware feature alignment via a direct loss and a progressive, function-local training schedule to capture quantization effects better and speed up convergence. Extensive experiments show that QuantSR+ achieves state-of-the-art performance against both specialized quantized SR methods and generic quantization approaches. For SwinIR-S on Urban100 (x4), it improves PSNR by 0.29 dB over the 2-bit SOTA baseline. Meanwhile, it delivers strong efficiency gains at 2-bit, reducing operations by up to 87.9% and storage by 89.4%. QuantSR+ is effective for both convolutional and transformer-based SR models, indicating broad applicability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_22351
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle QuantSR+: Pushing the Limit of Quantized Image Super-Resolution Networks
Qin, Haotong
Ma, Xudong
Liu, Xianglong
Luo, Jie
Guo, Jinyang
Magno, Michele
Zhang, Yulun
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Low-bit quantization is widely used to compress super-resolution (SR) models and reduce storage and computation costs for deployment on resource-limited devices. However, when SR models are pushed to ultra-low precision (2-4 bits), performance can drop sharply due to diminished representational capacity and the detail-sensitive nature of SR. To address these issues, we propose QuantSR+, a unified framework that improves quantization operators, network design, and training optimization, achieving better trade-offs between accuracy and efficiency than prior low-bit SR methods. QuantSR+ mainly relies on three technical contributions: (1) Redistribution-driven Bit Determination (RBD), which reshapes quantization distributions in both forward and backward passes to preserve representation fidelity; (2) Quantized Slimmable Architecture (QSA), which begins with an over-parameterized model and progressively prunes less critical blocks to meet efficiency budgets while pushing the accuracy performance; and (3) Slimming-guided Function-localized Distillation (SFD), which enforces block-aware feature alignment via a direct loss and a progressive, function-local training schedule to capture quantization effects better and speed up convergence. Extensive experiments show that QuantSR+ achieves state-of-the-art performance against both specialized quantized SR methods and generic quantization approaches. For SwinIR-S on Urban100 (x4), it improves PSNR by 0.29 dB over the 2-bit SOTA baseline. Meanwhile, it delivers strong efficiency gains at 2-bit, reducing operations by up to 87.9% and storage by 89.4%. QuantSR+ is effective for both convolutional and transformer-based SR models, indicating broad applicability.
title QuantSR+: Pushing the Limit of Quantized Image Super-Resolution Networks
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.22351