Rethinking Token Reduction for Diffusion Models via Output-Similarity-Awareness

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Lee, Hangyeol, Lee, Hyojeong, Kim, Joo-Young
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Lee, Hangyeol
Lee, Hyojeong
Kim, Joo-Young
author_facet Lee, Hangyeol
Lee, Hyojeong
Kim, Joo-Young
contents Diffusion Transformers (DiTs) achieve superior image generation quality but suffer from quadratic computational complexity relative to token count. While various token reduction (TR) methods have been proposed to mitigate this cost, they overlook the primary objective of generative models: minimizing recovery error, which requires reflecting output token similarity. They rely solely on input token similarity inherited from reduction-only ViT paradigms, leading to a fundamental misalignment with this objective. To bridge this gap, we propose DiTo, a novel TR paradigm that shifts the focus toward output-centric token reduction. Based on the observation that output token similarity is consistently preserved across adjacent timesteps, DiTo utilizes prior-step similarities as an effective proxy to establish token correspondences at a Matching timestep, which are then reused across multiple subsequent Reduction timesteps. To optimize this interleaved scheduling, we propose Pair Match Ratio (PMR)-guided Interval Scheduling to determine the optimal matching frequency. Furthermore, to mitigate localized approximation errors and resulting blocking artifacts caused by repeated reuse, we propose Frequency-aware Token Matching by incorporating a selection-frequency penalty. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DiTo consistently outperforms existing TR methods with 1.6-3.9 dB higher PSNR at comparable speedups, achieving a superior Pareto frontier.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_22011
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publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rethinking Token Reduction for Diffusion Models via Output-Similarity-Awareness
Lee, Hangyeol
Lee, Hyojeong
Kim, Joo-Young
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Diffusion Transformers (DiTs) achieve superior image generation quality but suffer from quadratic computational complexity relative to token count. While various token reduction (TR) methods have been proposed to mitigate this cost, they overlook the primary objective of generative models: minimizing recovery error, which requires reflecting output token similarity. They rely solely on input token similarity inherited from reduction-only ViT paradigms, leading to a fundamental misalignment with this objective. To bridge this gap, we propose DiTo, a novel TR paradigm that shifts the focus toward output-centric token reduction. Based on the observation that output token similarity is consistently preserved across adjacent timesteps, DiTo utilizes prior-step similarities as an effective proxy to establish token correspondences at a Matching timestep, which are then reused across multiple subsequent Reduction timesteps. To optimize this interleaved scheduling, we propose Pair Match Ratio (PMR)-guided Interval Scheduling to determine the optimal matching frequency. Furthermore, to mitigate localized approximation errors and resulting blocking artifacts caused by repeated reuse, we propose Frequency-aware Token Matching by incorporating a selection-frequency penalty. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DiTo consistently outperforms existing TR methods with 1.6-3.9 dB higher PSNR at comparable speedups, achieving a superior Pareto frontier.
title Rethinking Token Reduction for Diffusion Models via Output-Similarity-Awareness
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.22011