Learning Few-Step Diffusion Models by Trajectory Distribution Matching

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Main Authors: Luo, Yihong, Hu, Tianyang, Sun, Jiacheng, Cai, Yujun, Tang, Jing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Luo, Yihong
Hu, Tianyang
Sun, Jiacheng
Cai, Yujun
Tang, Jing
author_facet Luo, Yihong
Hu, Tianyang
Sun, Jiacheng
Cai, Yujun
Tang, Jing
contents Accelerating diffusion model sampling is crucial for efficient AIGC deployment. While diffusion distillation methods -- based on distribution matching and trajectory matching -- reduce sampling to as few as one step, they fall short on complex tasks like text-to-image generation. Few-step generation offers a better balance between speed and quality, but existing approaches face a persistent trade-off: distribution matching lacks flexibility for multi-step sampling, while trajectory matching often yields suboptimal image quality. To bridge this gap, we propose learning few-step diffusion models by Trajectory Distribution Matching (TDM), a unified distillation paradigm that combines the strengths of distribution and trajectory matching. Our method introduces a data-free score distillation objective, aligning the student's trajectory with the teacher's at the distribution level. Further, we develop a sampling-steps-aware objective that decouples learning targets across different steps, enabling more adjustable sampling. This approach supports both deterministic sampling for superior image quality and flexible multi-step adaptation, achieving state-of-the-art performance with remarkable efficiency. Our model, TDM, outperforms existing methods on various backbones, such as SDXL and PixArt-$α$, delivering superior quality and significantly reduced training costs. In particular, our method distills PixArt-$α$ into a 4-step generator that outperforms its teacher on real user preference at 1024 resolution. This is accomplished with 500 iterations and 2 A800 hours -- a mere 0.01% of the teacher's training cost. In addition, our proposed TDM can be extended to accelerate text-to-video diffusion. Notably, TDM can outperform its teacher model (CogVideoX-2B) by using only 4 NFE on VBench, improving the total score from 80.91 to 81.65. Project page: https://tdm-t2x.github.io/
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_06674
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning Few-Step Diffusion Models by Trajectory Distribution Matching
Luo, Yihong
Hu, Tianyang
Sun, Jiacheng
Cai, Yujun
Tang, Jing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Accelerating diffusion model sampling is crucial for efficient AIGC deployment. While diffusion distillation methods -- based on distribution matching and trajectory matching -- reduce sampling to as few as one step, they fall short on complex tasks like text-to-image generation. Few-step generation offers a better balance between speed and quality, but existing approaches face a persistent trade-off: distribution matching lacks flexibility for multi-step sampling, while trajectory matching often yields suboptimal image quality. To bridge this gap, we propose learning few-step diffusion models by Trajectory Distribution Matching (TDM), a unified distillation paradigm that combines the strengths of distribution and trajectory matching. Our method introduces a data-free score distillation objective, aligning the student's trajectory with the teacher's at the distribution level. Further, we develop a sampling-steps-aware objective that decouples learning targets across different steps, enabling more adjustable sampling. This approach supports both deterministic sampling for superior image quality and flexible multi-step adaptation, achieving state-of-the-art performance with remarkable efficiency. Our model, TDM, outperforms existing methods on various backbones, such as SDXL and PixArt-$α$, delivering superior quality and significantly reduced training costs. In particular, our method distills PixArt-$α$ into a 4-step generator that outperforms its teacher on real user preference at 1024 resolution. This is accomplished with 500 iterations and 2 A800 hours -- a mere 0.01% of the teacher's training cost. In addition, our proposed TDM can be extended to accelerate text-to-video diffusion. Notably, TDM can outperform its teacher model (CogVideoX-2B) by using only 4 NFE on VBench, improving the total score from 80.91 to 81.65. Project page: https://tdm-t2x.github.io/
title Learning Few-Step Diffusion Models by Trajectory Distribution Matching
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.06674