Wider or Deeper? Scaling LLM Inference-Time Compute with Adaptive Branching Tree Search

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Inoue, Yuichi, Misaki, Kou, Imajuku, Yuki, Kuroki, So, Nakamura, Taishi, Akiba, Takuya
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Inoue, Yuichi
Misaki, Kou
Imajuku, Yuki
Kuroki, So
Nakamura, Taishi
Akiba, Takuya
author_facet Inoue, Yuichi
Misaki, Kou
Imajuku, Yuki
Kuroki, So
Nakamura, Taishi
Akiba, Takuya
contents Recent advances demonstrate that increasing inference-time computation can significantly boost the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs). Although repeated sampling (i.e., generating multiple candidate outputs) is a highly effective strategy, it does not leverage external feedback signals for refinement, which are often available in tasks like coding. In this work, we propose Adaptive Branching Monte Carlo Tree Search (AB-MCTS), a novel inference-time framework that generalizes repeated sampling with principled multi-turn exploration and exploitation. At each node in the search tree, AB-MCTS dynamically decides whether to "go wider" by expanding new candidate responses or "go deeper" by revisiting existing ones based on external feedback signals. We evaluate our method on complex coding and engineering tasks using frontier models. Empirical results show that AB-MCTS consistently outperforms both repeated sampling and standard MCTS, underscoring the importance of combining the response diversity of LLMs with multi-turn solution refinement for effective inference-time scaling. Code is available at https://github.com/SakanaAI/treequest .
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_04412
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Wider or Deeper? Scaling LLM Inference-Time Compute with Adaptive Branching Tree Search
Inoue, Yuichi
Misaki, Kou
Imajuku, Yuki
Kuroki, So
Nakamura, Taishi
Akiba, Takuya
Artificial Intelligence
Recent advances demonstrate that increasing inference-time computation can significantly boost the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs). Although repeated sampling (i.e., generating multiple candidate outputs) is a highly effective strategy, it does not leverage external feedback signals for refinement, which are often available in tasks like coding. In this work, we propose Adaptive Branching Monte Carlo Tree Search (AB-MCTS), a novel inference-time framework that generalizes repeated sampling with principled multi-turn exploration and exploitation. At each node in the search tree, AB-MCTS dynamically decides whether to "go wider" by expanding new candidate responses or "go deeper" by revisiting existing ones based on external feedback signals. We evaluate our method on complex coding and engineering tasks using frontier models. Empirical results show that AB-MCTS consistently outperforms both repeated sampling and standard MCTS, underscoring the importance of combining the response diversity of LLMs with multi-turn solution refinement for effective inference-time scaling. Code is available at https://github.com/SakanaAI/treequest .
title Wider or Deeper? Scaling LLM Inference-Time Compute with Adaptive Branching Tree Search
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04412