ST$^3$: Accelerating Multimodal Large Language Model by Spatial-Temporal Visual Token Trimming

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhuang, Jiedong, Lu, Lu, Dai, Ming, Hu, Rui, Chen, Jian, Liu, Qiang, Hu, Haoji
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Zhuang, Jiedong
Lu, Lu
Dai, Ming
Hu, Rui
Chen, Jian
Liu, Qiang
Hu, Haoji
author_facet Zhuang, Jiedong
Lu, Lu
Dai, Ming
Hu, Rui
Chen, Jian
Liu, Qiang
Hu, Haoji
contents Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) enhance their perceptual capabilities by integrating visual and textual information. However, processing the massive number of visual tokens incurs a significant computational cost. Existing analysis of the MLLM attention mechanisms remains shallow, leading to coarse-grain token pruning strategies that fail to effectively balance speed and accuracy. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive investigation of MLLM attention mechanisms with LLaVA. We find that numerous visual tokens and partial attention computations are redundant during the decoding process. Based on this insight, we propose Spatial-Temporal Visual Token Trimming ($\textbf{ST}^{3}$), a framework designed to accelerate MLLM inference without retraining. $\textbf{ST}^{3}$ consists of two primary components: 1) Progressive Visual Token Pruning (\textbf{PVTP}), which eliminates inattentive visual tokens across layers, and 2) Visual Token Annealing (\textbf{VTA}), which dynamically reduces the number of visual tokens in each layer as the generated tokens grow. Together, these techniques deliver around $\mathbf{2\times}$ faster inference with only about $\mathbf{30\%}$ KV cache memory compared to the original LLaVA, while maintaining consistent performance across various datasets. Crucially, $\textbf{ST}^{3}$ can be seamlessly integrated into existing pre-trained MLLMs, providing a plug-and-play solution for efficient inference.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_20105
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ST$^3$: Accelerating Multimodal Large Language Model by Spatial-Temporal Visual Token Trimming
Zhuang, Jiedong
Lu, Lu
Dai, Ming
Hu, Rui
Chen, Jian
Liu, Qiang
Hu, Haoji
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) enhance their perceptual capabilities by integrating visual and textual information. However, processing the massive number of visual tokens incurs a significant computational cost. Existing analysis of the MLLM attention mechanisms remains shallow, leading to coarse-grain token pruning strategies that fail to effectively balance speed and accuracy. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive investigation of MLLM attention mechanisms with LLaVA. We find that numerous visual tokens and partial attention computations are redundant during the decoding process. Based on this insight, we propose Spatial-Temporal Visual Token Trimming ($\textbf{ST}^{3}$), a framework designed to accelerate MLLM inference without retraining. $\textbf{ST}^{3}$ consists of two primary components: 1) Progressive Visual Token Pruning (\textbf{PVTP}), which eliminates inattentive visual tokens across layers, and 2) Visual Token Annealing (\textbf{VTA}), which dynamically reduces the number of visual tokens in each layer as the generated tokens grow. Together, these techniques deliver around $\mathbf{2\times}$ faster inference with only about $\mathbf{30\%}$ KV cache memory compared to the original LLaVA, while maintaining consistent performance across various datasets. Crucially, $\textbf{ST}^{3}$ can be seamlessly integrated into existing pre-trained MLLMs, providing a plug-and-play solution for efficient inference.
title ST$^3$: Accelerating Multimodal Large Language Model by Spatial-Temporal Visual Token Trimming
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.20105