Causal Autoregressive Diffusion Language Model

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Ruan, Junhao, Li, Bei, Yin, Yongjing, Huang, Pengcheng, Chen, Xin, Wang, Jingang, Cai, Xunliang, Xiao, Tong, Zhu, JingBo
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Ruan, Junhao
Li, Bei
Yin, Yongjing
Huang, Pengcheng
Chen, Xin
Wang, Jingang
Cai, Xunliang
Xiao, Tong
Zhu, JingBo
author_facet Ruan, Junhao
Li, Bei
Yin, Yongjing
Huang, Pengcheng
Chen, Xin
Wang, Jingang
Cai, Xunliang
Xiao, Tong
Zhu, JingBo
contents In this work, we propose Causal Autoregressive Diffusion (CARD), a novel framework that unifies the training efficiency of ARMs with the high-throughput inference of diffusion models. CARD reformulates the diffusion process within a strictly causal attention mask, enabling dense, per-token supervision in a single forward pass. To address the optimization instability of causal diffusion, we introduce a soft-tailed masking schema to preserve local context and a context-aware reweighting mechanism derived from signal-to-noise principles. This design enables dynamic parallel decoding, where the model leverages KV-caching to adaptively generate variable-length token sequences based on confidence. Empirically, CARD outperforms existing discrete diffusion baselines while reducing training latency by 3 $\times$ compared to block diffusion methods. Our results demonstrate that CARD achieves ARM-level data efficiency while unlocking the latency benefits of parallel generation, establishing a robust paradigm for next-generation efficient LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_22031
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Causal Autoregressive Diffusion Language Model
Ruan, Junhao
Li, Bei
Yin, Yongjing
Huang, Pengcheng
Chen, Xin
Wang, Jingang
Cai, Xunliang
Xiao, Tong
Zhu, JingBo
Computation and Language
In this work, we propose Causal Autoregressive Diffusion (CARD), a novel framework that unifies the training efficiency of ARMs with the high-throughput inference of diffusion models. CARD reformulates the diffusion process within a strictly causal attention mask, enabling dense, per-token supervision in a single forward pass. To address the optimization instability of causal diffusion, we introduce a soft-tailed masking schema to preserve local context and a context-aware reweighting mechanism derived from signal-to-noise principles. This design enables dynamic parallel decoding, where the model leverages KV-caching to adaptively generate variable-length token sequences based on confidence. Empirically, CARD outperforms existing discrete diffusion baselines while reducing training latency by 3 $\times$ compared to block diffusion methods. Our results demonstrate that CARD achieves ARM-level data efficiency while unlocking the latency benefits of parallel generation, establishing a robust paradigm for next-generation efficient LLMs.
title Causal Autoregressive Diffusion Language Model
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.22031