Scaling inference-time computation has emerged as a reliable method to improve the performance of large language models on complex reasoning and programming tasks. However, standard approaches such as independent sampling and sequential multi-turn refinement operate without token-level credit assignment, resulting in computational inefficiency, since valid reasoning prefixes are frequently discarded.
arXiv:2605. 25143v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Test-time scaling improves language model reasoning by spending additional compute to explore multiple solution trajectories.
By Dao Tran, Duc Anh Le, Ngoc Luu, Quan Pham, Tung Pham, Hung Bui
arXiv:2608. 04001v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models can solve substantially harder reasoning problems with more inference-time compute.
By Mohsen Hariri, Weicong Chen, Nahal Shahini, Vikash Singh, Kai Ye, Amirhossein Samandar, Debargha Ganguly, Sreehari Sankar, Yanyan Zhang, Shouren Wang, Jerry Peng, Biyao Zhang, Michael Hinczewski, Vipin Chaudhary
The paper introduces Planned Test-Time Scaling (PTTS), a method that replaces independent sampling of reasoning branches with a coordinated joint policy. PTTS uses a planner to generate distinct solution outlines for each branch and an executor to produce full solutions, thereby improving coverage of complementary reasoning modes. Two variants—PTTS‑ZS (zero‑shot) and PTTS‑RL (reinforcement‑learned)—demonstrate significant gains on five mathematical reasoning benchmarks, with PTTS‑RL achieving up to a 13.4‑point improvement in pass@64 over repeated sampling.
By Xueqing Wu, Langxing Bai, Hritik Bansal, Po-Nien Kung, Shuo Li, Hao Liu, Nanyun Peng, Kai-Wei Chang
arXiv:2505. 12992v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Inference-time scaling techniques have significantly bolstered the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) by harnessing additional computational effort at inference without retraining.
By Baohao Liao, Hanze Dong, Yuhui Xu, Doyen Sahoo, Christof Monz, Junnan Li, Caiming Xiong
arXiv:2510. 13940v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Recent progress in large language models (LLMs) has focused on test-time scaling to improve reasoning via increased inference computation, but often at the cost of efficiency.
By Zhen Yang, Mingyang Zhang, Feng Chen, Ganggui Ding, Liang Hou, Xin Tao, Ying-Cong Chen
arXiv:2608. 09898v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Test-time scaling often uses an external verifier, such as compilers and test cases in coding or trained value functions in robotics applications, to obtain high-quality rollouts.
By Lecheng Kong, Like Hui, Haitao Mao, Jun Huan
The paper proposes a unified framework for test‑time reasoning methods, framing them as recursion operators—GROW, PRUNE, and BRANCH—applied to an agent’s reasoning trace. Experiments across five benchmarks and three frontier models show that BRANCH, which samples and selects among multiple reasoning paths, consistently outperforms the other operators and a single‑pass chain‑of‑thought baseline, improving accuracy by an average of 5.98 percentage points. The study also highlights the importance of paired evaluation and careful handling of scoring‑pipeline failures, as these factors can significantly alter comparative outcomes.
By Shengxin Zhang, Xiaomin Wu, Xiyang Wu, Jing Xie
arXiv:2608. 08020v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Test-time compute scaling is a primary driver of performance in large reasoning models (LRMs), but extreme inefficiency bounds current approaches, shifting the critical question from \emph{how much} compute to spend, to \emph{where} to allocate it.
By Lijie Yang, Hongyin Luo, Tri Dao, Ravi Netravali
arXiv:2608. 15303v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Test-time compute can substantially improve Large Language Model (LLM) reasoning performance, yet how and when additional compute helps remains poorly understood.
By Bo Wen, Yuhao Chen, Erhan Bilal, Carla Agurto Rios, Chen Wang, Junchen Jiang
Test-time scaling often uses an external verifier, such as compilers and test cases in coding or trained value functions in robotics applications, to obtain high-quality rollouts. Verifier-free test-time scaling (or VF-TTS) is gaining extensive attention as a mechanism to enhance Large Language Model (LLM) reasoning, primarily because we do not have access to such high-quality verifiers in many real-world applications.
TRACES (Tagging Reasoning Steps for Adaptive Cost‑Efficient Early‑Stopping) is a lightweight framework that tags reasoning steps of large‑language models in real time, enabling adaptive, cost‑efficient early stopping during inference. By monitoring the types of steps generated, the method identifies when models shift their reasoning after arriving at a correct answer, allowing for interpretable stopping criteria. Experiments on mathematical reasoning benchmarks (MATH500, GSM8K, AIME) and knowledge benchmarks (MMLU, GPQA) show token reductions of 20–50% while preserving accuracy, with more conservative thresholds needed for harder tasks such as BeyondAIME and IMO AnswerBench.
By Yannis Belkhiter, Seshu Tirupathi, Giulio Zizzo, John D. Kelleher