arXiv AI

Zarya: A Hybrid Autoregressive--Masked Diffusion Language Model with Flexible Training and Dual-Mode Inference

Zarya is a hybrid language model that jointly trains an autoregressive objective and a masked-diffusion objective within a single architecture. It structures training data into variable-size slots and uses a curriculum that gradually increases slot granularity, allowing a smooth transition from fine-grained AR learning to coarse-grained diffusion learning. At inference, Zarya offers two decoding modes—MDM sampling with first-hitting denoising and slotted speculative decoding that interleaves diffusion-based selection with autoregressive infilling—while fully decoupling training and inference regimes and supporting extensive configurability.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

Unlocking Lossless Speedups in LLMs via Discrete Diffusion

arXiv:2609. 04010v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) owe much of their success to next-token prediction (NTP), but their autoregressive (AR) structure requires slow, sequential token generation.

By Subham Sekhar Sahoo, Lingjie Chen, Khiem Pham, Jonathan Geuter, Chaitanya Dwivedi, Varad Pimpalkhute, Yash Akhauri, Alexander Moreno, Mikhail Yurochkin, Zhenting Wang, Mostafa Elhoushi, Nolan Dey, Shane Bergsma, Joel Hestness, John Thickstun, Eric Xing, Zhengzhong Liu
arXiv AI
Jun 2

SimSD: Simple Speculative Decoding in Diffusion Language Models

arXiv:2606. 02544v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Diffusion large language models (dLLMs) have recently emerged as a promising alternative to autoregressive (AR) LLMs, offering faster inference through parallel or blockwise decoding.

By Junxia Cui, Haotian Ye, Runchu Tian, Hongcan Guo, Jinya Jiang, Haoru Li, Chaojie Ren, Yiming Huang, Kaijie Zhu, Zhongkai Yu, Kun Zhou, Jingbo Shang
arXiv AI
Sep 3

Predict, Don't Iterate: Efficient Adaptive-Length Infilling for Diffusion Language Models

The paper introduces PILL, a new infilling technique for diffusion language models that eliminates the need for a preset initial length and reduces inference overhead. PILL uses probing-based length-free decoding, cutting down on extra forward passes and speeding up generation. Experiments across five diffusion models and eight benchmarks show PILL outperforms the strongest baseline with higher pass rates and BLEU-2 scores while running 1.82× faster.

By Haobo Xu, Sirui Chen, Yuanchen Bei, Lingjie Chen, Yuchen Yan, Dongqi Fu, Jingrui He, Hanghang Tong
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 22

AdaFlash: Adaptive Speculative Decoding via On-Policy Distilled Diffusion Drafters

arXiv:2607. 19223v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Speculative decoding, in which a lightweight draft model first generates a draft sequence that is then verified in parallel by the target model, has become a prevalent paradigm for accelerating large language model inference.

By Yu-Yang Qian, Hao-Cong Wu, Chen Chen, Jiacheng Sun, Zhenhua Dong, Peng Zhao, Zhi-Hua Zhou
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 21

AdaFlash: Adaptive Speculative Decoding via On-Policy Distilled Diffusion Drafters

Speculative decoding, in which a lightweight draft model first generates a draft sequence that is then verified in parallel by the target model, has become a prevalent paradigm for accelerating large language model inference. Recent work such as DFlash further boosts drafting efficiency by leveraging diffusion drafters, whose parallel denoising mechanism enables draft generation in a single forward pass.