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Main Authors: Sui, Yang, Chuang, Yu-Neng, Wang, Guanchu, Zhang, Jiamu, Zhang, Tianyi, Yuan, Jiayi, Liu, Hongyi, Wen, Andrew, Zhong, Shaochen, Zou, Na, Chen, Hanjie, Hu, Xia
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16419
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author Sui, Yang
Chuang, Yu-Neng
Wang, Guanchu
Zhang, Jiamu
Zhang, Tianyi
Yuan, Jiayi
Liu, Hongyi
Wen, Andrew
Zhong, Shaochen
Zou, Na
Chen, Hanjie
Hu, Xia
author_facet Sui, Yang
Chuang, Yu-Neng
Wang, Guanchu
Zhang, Jiamu
Zhang, Tianyi
Yuan, Jiayi
Liu, Hongyi
Wen, Andrew
Zhong, Shaochen
Zou, Na
Chen, Hanjie
Hu, Xia
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in complex tasks. Recent advancements in Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), such as OpenAI o1 and DeepSeek-R1, have further improved performance in System-2 reasoning domains like mathematics and programming by harnessing supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and reinforcement learning (RL) techniques to enhance the Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning. However, while longer CoT reasoning sequences improve performance, they also introduce significant computational overhead due to verbose and redundant outputs, known as the "overthinking phenomenon". In this paper, we provide the first structured survey to systematically investigate and explore the current progress toward achieving efficient reasoning in LLMs. Overall, relying on the inherent mechanism of LLMs, we categorize existing works into several key directions: (1) model-based efficient reasoning, which considers optimizing full-length reasoning models into more concise reasoning models or directly training efficient reasoning models; (2) reasoning output-based efficient reasoning, which aims to dynamically reduce reasoning steps and length during inference; (3) input prompts-based efficient reasoning, which seeks to enhance reasoning efficiency based on input prompt properties such as difficulty or length control. Additionally, we introduce the use of efficient data for training reasoning models, explore the reasoning capabilities of small language models, and discuss evaluation methods and benchmarking. Project website: https://github.com/Eclipsess/Awesome-Efficient-Reasoning-LLMs
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_16419
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Stop Overthinking: A Survey on Efficient Reasoning for Large Language Models
Sui, Yang
Chuang, Yu-Neng
Wang, Guanchu
Zhang, Jiamu
Zhang, Tianyi
Yuan, Jiayi
Liu, Hongyi
Wen, Andrew
Zhong, Shaochen
Zou, Na
Chen, Hanjie
Hu, Xia
Computation and Language
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in complex tasks. Recent advancements in Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), such as OpenAI o1 and DeepSeek-R1, have further improved performance in System-2 reasoning domains like mathematics and programming by harnessing supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and reinforcement learning (RL) techniques to enhance the Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning. However, while longer CoT reasoning sequences improve performance, they also introduce significant computational overhead due to verbose and redundant outputs, known as the "overthinking phenomenon". In this paper, we provide the first structured survey to systematically investigate and explore the current progress toward achieving efficient reasoning in LLMs. Overall, relying on the inherent mechanism of LLMs, we categorize existing works into several key directions: (1) model-based efficient reasoning, which considers optimizing full-length reasoning models into more concise reasoning models or directly training efficient reasoning models; (2) reasoning output-based efficient reasoning, which aims to dynamically reduce reasoning steps and length during inference; (3) input prompts-based efficient reasoning, which seeks to enhance reasoning efficiency based on input prompt properties such as difficulty or length control. Additionally, we introduce the use of efficient data for training reasoning models, explore the reasoning capabilities of small language models, and discuss evaluation methods and benchmarking. Project website: https://github.com/Eclipsess/Awesome-Efficient-Reasoning-LLMs
title Stop Overthinking: A Survey on Efficient Reasoning for Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16419