# On the Design Fundamentals of Diffusion Models: A Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.04542 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04542/

## Key facts

- Cited by 60 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 276 of its 370 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jun 2023.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion foundations and sampling](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-foundations-and-sampling/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 276)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Wide Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.07146/) (2016)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [Group Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08494/) (2018)
- [Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07636/) (2021)
- [LSUN: Construction of a Large-scale Image Dataset using Deep Learning with Humans in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03365/) (2015)
- [DiffWave: A Versatile Diffusion Model for Audio Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09761/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 60)

- [A Survey on Diffusion Models for Time Series and Spatio-Temporal Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18886/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Models and Representation Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00783/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Model-Based Video Editing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07111/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Model Predictive Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05364/) (2024)
- [The Rise of Diffusion Models in Time-Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03006/) (2024)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Action Quality Assessment: Method and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11149/) (2024)
- [U3DS3: Unsupervised 3D Semantic Scene Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06018/) (2023)
- [Offline Model-Based Optimization: Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17286/) (2025)
- [CutDiffusion: A Simple, Fast, Cheap, and Strong Diffusion Extrapolation Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15141/) (2024)
- [Zero-Shot Novel View and Depth Synthesis with Multi-View Geometric Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.18804/) (2025)
- [HINT: High-quality INPainting Transformer with Mask-Aware Encoding and Enhanced Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14185/) (2024)
- [Hard No-Box Adversarial Attack on Skeleton-Based Human Action Recognition with Skeleton-Motion-Informed Gradient](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05681/) (2023)
- [MotionMix: Weakly-Supervised Diffusion for Controllable Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11115/) (2024)
- [SAGI: Semantically Aligned and Uncertainty Guided AI Image Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06593/) (2025)
- [Applications of Generative AI (GAI) for Mobile and Wireless Networking: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20024/) (2024)
- [BP-SGCN: Behavioral Pseudo-Label Informed Sparse Graph Convolution Network for Pedestrian and Heterogeneous Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14676/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Brain Tumor Segmentation from the Frequency Domain Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10142/) (2025)
- [TRACE: Temporally Reliable Anatomically-Conditioned 3D CT Generation with Enhanced Efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00802/) (2025)
- [Unaligned 2D to 3D Translation with Conditional Vector-Quantized Code Diffusion using Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14152/) (2023)
- [ImagenWorld: Stress-Testing Image Generation Models with Explainable Human Evaluation on Open-ended Real-World Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27862/) (2026)
- [GRIN: Zero-Shot Metric Depth with Pixel-Level Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09896/) (2024)
- [Towards efficient quantum algorithms for diffusion probabilistic models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14252/) (2025)
- [Ambiguous Medical Image Segmentation Using Diffusion Schr"odinger Bridge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17187/) (2025)
- [Generative AI in Depth: A Survey of Recent Advances, Model Variants, and Real-World Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21887/) (2025)
- [FineCausal: A Causal-Based Framework for Interpretable Fine-Grained Action Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23911/) (2025)
- [Large-Scale Multi-Character Interaction Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14087/) (2025)
- [Consistent Mesh Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00971/) (2023)
- [EvolvED: Evolutionary Embeddings to Understand the Generation Process of Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17462/) (2024)
- [UV-free Texture Generation with Denoising and Geodesic Heat Diffusions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16762/) (2024)
- [An Overview about Emerging Technologies of Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13302/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models are learning pattern-learning systems to model and sample from data distributions with three functional components namely the forward process, the reverse process, and the sampling process. The components of diffusion models have gained significant attention with many design factors being considered in common practice. Existing reviews have primarily focused on higher-level solutions, covering less on the design fundamentals of components. This study seeks to address this gap by providing a comprehensive and coherent review of seminal designable factors within each functional component of diffusion models. This provides a finer-grained perspective of diffusion models, benefiting future studies in the analysis of individual components, the design factors for different purposes, and the implementation of diffusion models.