# Checkerboard Context Model for Efficient Learned Image Compression

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.15306 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15306/

## Key facts

- Cited by 202 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Variational image compression with a scale hyperprior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01436/) (2018)
- [End-to-end Optimized Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01704/) (2016)
- [Joint Autoregressive and Hierarchical Priors for Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02736/) (2018)
- [Learned Image Compression with Discretized Gaussian Mixture Likelihoods and Attention Modules](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.01568/) (2020)
- [Lossy Image Compression with Compressive Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.00395/) (2017)
- [Channel-wise Autoregressive Entropy Models for Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08739/) (2020)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks for Extreme Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02958/) (2018)
- [Full Resolution Image Compression with Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.05148/) (2016)
- [Context-adaptive Entropy Model for End-to-end Optimized Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.10452/) (2018)
- [Real-Time Adaptive Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.05823/) (2017)
- [Variable Rate Deep Image Compression With a Conditional Autoencoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04802/) (2019)
- [Learning Convolutional Networks for Content-weighted Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.10553/) (2017)
- [Efficient and Effective Context-Based Convolutional Entropy Modeling for Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.10057/) (2019)
- [Computationally Efficient Neural Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.08771/) (2019)
- [Efficient Nonlinear Transforms for Lossy Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00847/) (2018)
- [Image-Dependent Local Entropy Models for Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.12295/) (2018)
- [Multi-scale and Context-adaptive Entropy Model for Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07844/) (2019)
- [Learning to Inpaint for Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.08855/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 202)

- [ELIC: Efficient Learned Image Compression with Unevenly Grouped Space-Channel Contextual Adaptive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10886/) (2022)
- [Learned Image Compression with Mixed Transformer-CNN Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14978/) (2023)
- [HAC: Hash-grid Assisted Context for 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14530/) (2024)
- [Neural Video Compression with Diverse Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14402/) (2023)
- [The Devil Is in the Details: Window-based Attention for Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.08450/) (2022)
- [Hybrid Spatial-Temporal Entropy Modelling for Neural Video Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05894/) (2022)
- [Entroformer: A Transformer-based Entropy Model for Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05492/) (2022)
- [MLIC: Multi-Reference Entropy Model for Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07273/) (2022)
- [Multi-Realism Image Compression with a Conditional Generator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.13824/) (2022)
- [Towards Extreme Image Compression with Latent Feature Guidance and Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18820/) (2024)
- [MLIC++: Linear Complexity Multi-Reference Entropy Modeling for Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15421/) (2023)
- [HAC++: Towards 100X Compression of 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12255/) (2025)
- [C3: High-performance and low-complexity neural compression from a single image or video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02753/) (2023)
- [Joint Global and Local Hierarchical Priors for Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04487/) (2021)
- [EVC: Towards Real-Time Neural Image Compression with Mask Decay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05071/) (2023)
- [Contextformer: A Transformer with Spatio-Channel Attention for Context Modeling in Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02452/) (2022)
- [Unified Multivariate Gaussian Mixture for Efficient Neural Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10897/) (2022)
- [Perceptual Learned Video Compression with Recurrent Conditional GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.03082/) (2021)
- [Learned Image Compression with Gaussian-Laplacian-Logistic Mixture Model and Concatenated Residual Modules](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06463/) (2021)
- [Lossy Image Compression with Quantized Hierarchical VAEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.13056/) (2022)
- [Image Compression with Product Quantized Masked Image Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07372/) (2022)
- [StableCodec: Taming One-Step Diffusion for Extreme Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21977/) (2025)
- [QARV: Quantization-Aware ResNet VAE for Lossy Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08899/) (2023)
- [HEMGS: A Hybrid Entropy Model for 3D Gaussian Splatting Data Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18473/) (2024)
- [How Far Can We Compress Instant-NGP-Based NeRF?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04101/) (2024)
- [NVRC: Neural Video Representation Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.07414/) (2024)
- [Compression with Bayesian Implicit Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19185/) (2023)
- [Computationally-Efficient Neural Image Compression with Shallow Decoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06244/) (2023)
- [Spatial Decomposition and Temporal Fusion based Inter Prediction for Learned Video Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15864/) (2024)
- [RDEIC: Accelerating Diffusion-Based Extreme Image Compression with Relay Residual Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02640/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

For learned image compression, the autoregressive context model is proved effective in improving the rate-distortion (RD) performance. Because it helps remove spatial redundancies among latent representations. However, the decoding process must be done in a strict scan order, which breaks the parallelization. We propose a parallelizable checkerboard context model (CCM) to solve the problem. Our two-pass checkerboard context calculation eliminates such limitations on spatial locations by re-organizing the decoding order. Speeding up the decoding process more than 40 times in our experiments, it achieves significantly improved computational efficiency with almost the same rate-distortion performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first exploration on parallelization-friendly spatial context model for learned image compression.