SDFP: Speculative Decoding with FIT-Pruned Models for Training-Free and Plug-and-Play LLM Acceleration

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Wei, Hanyu, Su, Zunhai, Lu, Peng, Li, Chao, Tiwari, Spandan, Sirasao, Ashish, Dong, Yuhan
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Wei, Hanyu
Su, Zunhai
Lu, Peng
Li, Chao
Tiwari, Spandan
Sirasao, Ashish
Dong, Yuhan
author_facet Wei, Hanyu
Su, Zunhai
Lu, Peng
Li, Chao
Tiwari, Spandan
Sirasao, Ashish
Dong, Yuhan
contents Large language models (LLMs) underpin interactive multimedia applications such as captioning, retrieval, recommendation, and creative content generation, yet their autoregressive decoding incurs substantial latency. Speculative decoding reduces latency using a lightweight draft model, but deployment is often limited by the cost and complexity of acquiring, tuning, and maintaining an effective draft model. Recent approaches usually require auxiliary training or specialization, and even training-free methods incur costly search or optimization. We propose SDFP, a fully training-free and plug-and-play framework that builds the draft model via Fisher Information Trace (FIT)-based layer pruning of a given LLM. Using layer sensitivity as a proxy for output perturbation, SDFP removes low-impact layers to obtain a compact draft while preserving compatibility with the original model for standard speculative verification. SDFP needs no additional training, hyperparameter tuning, or separately maintained drafts, enabling rapid, deployment-friendly draft construction. Across benchmarks, SDFP delivers 1.32x-1.5x decoding speedup without altering the target model's output distribution, supporting low-latency multimedia applications.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_05499
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SDFP: Speculative Decoding with FIT-Pruned Models for Training-Free and Plug-and-Play LLM Acceleration
Wei, Hanyu
Su, Zunhai
Lu, Peng
Li, Chao
Tiwari, Spandan
Sirasao, Ashish
Dong, Yuhan
Artificial Intelligence
Large language models (LLMs) underpin interactive multimedia applications such as captioning, retrieval, recommendation, and creative content generation, yet their autoregressive decoding incurs substantial latency. Speculative decoding reduces latency using a lightweight draft model, but deployment is often limited by the cost and complexity of acquiring, tuning, and maintaining an effective draft model. Recent approaches usually require auxiliary training or specialization, and even training-free methods incur costly search or optimization. We propose SDFP, a fully training-free and plug-and-play framework that builds the draft model via Fisher Information Trace (FIT)-based layer pruning of a given LLM. Using layer sensitivity as a proxy for output perturbation, SDFP removes low-impact layers to obtain a compact draft while preserving compatibility with the original model for standard speculative verification. SDFP needs no additional training, hyperparameter tuning, or separately maintained drafts, enabling rapid, deployment-friendly draft construction. Across benchmarks, SDFP delivers 1.32x-1.5x decoding speedup without altering the target model's output distribution, supporting low-latency multimedia applications.
title SDFP: Speculative Decoding with FIT-Pruned Models for Training-Free and Plug-and-Play LLM Acceleration
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05499