Intel’s new TSNC technology reduces textures up to 18x with minimal quality loss

Intel continues to advance its technologies to improve graphics quality, generally related to the gaming. For this, it has presented a new system of neural compression for textures which reduces the size considerably with minimal loss of quality. This system called TSNC (Texture Set Neural Compression) It is capable of reducing the size of textures in two modes A and B that offer maximum compression or optimized performance.

Intel TSNC: AI texture compression that reduces up to 18 times the size

The system uses neural networks trained with millions of textures standardized, creating an AI model capable of replacing the textures usually compressed in format BCn. This neural network processes the input of these BCn textures and they are compressed using this AI model and a special encoder, and then decompressed using a decoder. An action that can reduce up to 18 times the size of the textures with minimal loss of quality.

This technique can reduce the game installation size and reduce the use of VRAM requiredresulting in improved performance. In addition, the manufacturer offers two modes for this compression with a better compression result or to improve the quality even by reducing the size of the textures. He mode A is capable of reducing the size up to 9 times in a set of standard textures with an almost imperceptible drop in quality. He mode B reduces up to 18 times the size of the textures offering greater efficiency, in exchange for a greater loss of quality.

Less VRAM, better performance and two compression modes

In model A Intel has determined a 5% quality losswhile with mode B the loss is 7%. The tests have been carried out using its most powerful integrated graphics card, the Intel Arc B390which has XMX cores capable of carrying out this type of operations. The first texture pixel has been generated in just 0.194 nanosecondsmore than enough speed to not notice additional latency when using this technology, and to eliminate slower rendering problems in games.

For the moment, Intel has presented this technology that will not be available in phase Alpha until the end of 2026to later enter the Beta phase and Final phase, although for the latter there is no even approximate date. We leave you the complete video of the presentation.