LaCo: Efficient Layer-wise Compression of Visual Tokens for Multimodal Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Liu, Juntao, Niu, Liqiang, Chen, Wenchao, Zhou, Jie, Meng, Fandong
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Liu, Juntao
Niu, Liqiang
Chen, Wenchao
Zhou, Jie
Meng, Fandong
author_facet Liu, Juntao
Niu, Liqiang
Chen, Wenchao
Zhou, Jie
Meng, Fandong
contents Existing visual token compression methods for Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) predominantly operate as post-encoder modules, limiting their potential for efficiency gains. To address this limitation, we propose LaCo (Layer-wise Visual Token Compression), a novel framework that enables effective token compression within the intermediate layers of the vision encoder. LaCo introduces two core components: 1) a layer-wise pixel-shuffle mechanism that systematically merges adjacent tokens through space-to-channel transformations, and 2) a residual learning architecture with non-parametric shortcuts that preserves critical visual information during compression. Extensive experiments indicate that our LaCo outperforms all existing methods when compressing tokens in the intermediate layers of the vision encoder, demonstrating superior effectiveness. In addition, compared to external compression, our method improves training efficiency beyond 20% and inference throughput over 15% while maintaining strong performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_02279
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LaCo: Efficient Layer-wise Compression of Visual Tokens for Multimodal Large Language Models
Liu, Juntao
Niu, Liqiang
Chen, Wenchao
Zhou, Jie
Meng, Fandong
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Existing visual token compression methods for Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) predominantly operate as post-encoder modules, limiting their potential for efficiency gains. To address this limitation, we propose LaCo (Layer-wise Visual Token Compression), a novel framework that enables effective token compression within the intermediate layers of the vision encoder. LaCo introduces two core components: 1) a layer-wise pixel-shuffle mechanism that systematically merges adjacent tokens through space-to-channel transformations, and 2) a residual learning architecture with non-parametric shortcuts that preserves critical visual information during compression. Extensive experiments indicate that our LaCo outperforms all existing methods when compressing tokens in the intermediate layers of the vision encoder, demonstrating superior effectiveness. In addition, compared to external compression, our method improves training efficiency beyond 20% and inference throughput over 15% while maintaining strong performance.
title LaCo: Efficient Layer-wise Compression of Visual Tokens for Multimodal Large Language Models
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02279