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Main Authors: Ma, Nanye, Tong, Shangyuan, Jia, Haolin, Hu, Hexiang, Su, Yu-Chuan, Zhang, Mingda, Yang, Xuan, Li, Yandong, Jaakkola, Tommi, Jia, Xuhui, Xie, Saining
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.09732
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author Ma, Nanye
Tong, Shangyuan
Jia, Haolin
Hu, Hexiang
Su, Yu-Chuan
Zhang, Mingda
Yang, Xuan
Li, Yandong
Jaakkola, Tommi
Jia, Xuhui
Xie, Saining
author_facet Ma, Nanye
Tong, Shangyuan
Jia, Haolin
Hu, Hexiang
Su, Yu-Chuan
Zhang, Mingda
Yang, Xuan
Li, Yandong
Jaakkola, Tommi
Jia, Xuhui
Xie, Saining
contents Generative models have made significant impacts across various domains, largely due to their ability to scale during training by increasing data, computational resources, and model size, a phenomenon characterized by the scaling laws. Recent research has begun to explore inference-time scaling behavior in Large Language Models (LLMs), revealing how performance can further improve with additional computation during inference. Unlike LLMs, diffusion models inherently possess the flexibility to adjust inference-time computation via the number of denoising steps, although the performance gains typically flatten after a few dozen. In this work, we explore the inference-time scaling behavior of diffusion models beyond increasing denoising steps and investigate how the generation performance can further improve with increased computation. Specifically, we consider a search problem aimed at identifying better noises for the diffusion sampling process. We structure the design space along two axes: the verifiers used to provide feedback, and the algorithms used to find better noise candidates. Through extensive experiments on class-conditioned and text-conditioned image generation benchmarks, our findings reveal that increasing inference-time compute leads to substantial improvements in the quality of samples generated by diffusion models, and with the complicated nature of images, combinations of the components in the framework can be specifically chosen to conform with different application scenario.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_09732
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Inference-Time Scaling for Diffusion Models beyond Scaling Denoising Steps
Ma, Nanye
Tong, Shangyuan
Jia, Haolin
Hu, Hexiang
Su, Yu-Chuan
Zhang, Mingda
Yang, Xuan
Li, Yandong
Jaakkola, Tommi
Jia, Xuhui
Xie, Saining
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Generative models have made significant impacts across various domains, largely due to their ability to scale during training by increasing data, computational resources, and model size, a phenomenon characterized by the scaling laws. Recent research has begun to explore inference-time scaling behavior in Large Language Models (LLMs), revealing how performance can further improve with additional computation during inference. Unlike LLMs, diffusion models inherently possess the flexibility to adjust inference-time computation via the number of denoising steps, although the performance gains typically flatten after a few dozen. In this work, we explore the inference-time scaling behavior of diffusion models beyond increasing denoising steps and investigate how the generation performance can further improve with increased computation. Specifically, we consider a search problem aimed at identifying better noises for the diffusion sampling process. We structure the design space along two axes: the verifiers used to provide feedback, and the algorithms used to find better noise candidates. Through extensive experiments on class-conditioned and text-conditioned image generation benchmarks, our findings reveal that increasing inference-time compute leads to substantial improvements in the quality of samples generated by diffusion models, and with the complicated nature of images, combinations of the components in the framework can be specifically chosen to conform with different application scenario.
title Inference-Time Scaling for Diffusion Models beyond Scaling Denoising Steps
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.09732