arXiv Computation and Language By Yujian Chen, Hao Jiang, Guang Cheng, Weijian Luo, Tianyang Hu

The Generative Gap Between Speculative Drafter and Continuous Diffusion Language Model

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The study compares continuous diffusion language models (CDLMs) and speculative drafters by training them from scratch on unconditional OpenWebText generation at lengths 16, 128, and 1024. Using LangFlow for CDLMs and adapted DSpark Markov and recurrent-head architectures for standalone generation, the authors evaluate generation perplexity (GenPPL) and MAUVE similarity. Results show LangFlow outperforms both DSpark variants at longer lengths (128 and 1024), while DSpark-RNN leads at length 16; recurrent memory and teacher probability matching improve metrics but the longer‑sequence gap remains, highlighting iterative full‑sequence refinement as a key advantage.

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