Efficient Generative Model Training via Embedded Representation Warmup

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Deyuan, Sun, Peng, Li, Xufeng, Lin, Tao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866909814134669312
author Liu, Deyuan
Sun, Peng
Li, Xufeng
Lin, Tao
author_facet Liu, Deyuan
Sun, Peng
Li, Xufeng
Lin, Tao
contents Generative models face a fundamental challenge: they must simultaneously learn high-level semantic concepts (what to generate) and low-level synthesis details (how to generate it). Conventional end-to-end training entangles these distinct, and often conflicting objectives, leading to a complex and inefficient optimization process. We argue that explicitly decoupling these tasks is key to unlocking more effective and efficient generative modeling. To this end, we propose Embedded Representation Warmup (ERW), a principled two-phase training framework. The first phase is dedicated to building a robust semantic foundation by aligning the early layers of a diffusion model with a powerful pretrained encoder. This provides a strong representational prior, allowing the second phase -- generative full training with alignment loss to refine the representation -- to focus its resources on high-fidelity synthesis. Our analysis confirms that this efficacy stems from functionally specializing the model's early layers for representation. Empirically, our framework achieves a 11.5$\times$ speedup in 350 epochs to reach FID=1.41 compared to single-phase methods like REPA. Code is available at https://github.com/LINs-lab/ERW.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_10188
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Efficient Generative Model Training via Embedded Representation Warmup
Liu, Deyuan
Sun, Peng
Li, Xufeng
Lin, Tao
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Generative models face a fundamental challenge: they must simultaneously learn high-level semantic concepts (what to generate) and low-level synthesis details (how to generate it). Conventional end-to-end training entangles these distinct, and often conflicting objectives, leading to a complex and inefficient optimization process. We argue that explicitly decoupling these tasks is key to unlocking more effective and efficient generative modeling. To this end, we propose Embedded Representation Warmup (ERW), a principled two-phase training framework. The first phase is dedicated to building a robust semantic foundation by aligning the early layers of a diffusion model with a powerful pretrained encoder. This provides a strong representational prior, allowing the second phase -- generative full training with alignment loss to refine the representation -- to focus its resources on high-fidelity synthesis. Our analysis confirms that this efficacy stems from functionally specializing the model's early layers for representation. Empirically, our framework achieves a 11.5$\times$ speedup in 350 epochs to reach FID=1.41 compared to single-phase methods like REPA. Code is available at https://github.com/LINs-lab/ERW.
title Efficient Generative Model Training via Embedded Representation Warmup
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.10188