# Rolling Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.09470 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09470/

## Key facts

- Cited by 104 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Flow matching, time series and science, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 50 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Feb 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Flow matching, time series and science](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/flow-matching-time-series-and-science/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 50)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (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)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Quo Vadis, Action Recognition? A New Model and the Kinetics Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07750/) (2017)
- [Fourier Neural Operator for Parametric Partial Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08895/) (2020)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [The Kinetics Human Action Video Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.06950/) (2017)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [DiffWave: A Versatile Diffusion Model for Audio Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09761/) (2020)
- [Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10789/) (2022)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [Variational Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00630/) (2021)
- [Diffusion-LM Improves Controllable Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14217/) (2022)
- [On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03142/) (2022)
- [VideoGPT: Video Generation using VQ-VAE and Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10157/) (2021)
- [Language Model Beats Diffusion -- Tokenizer is Key to Visual Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05737/) (2023)
- [CSDI: Conditional Score-based Diffusion Models for Probabilistic Time Series Imputation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03502/) (2021)
- [Phenaki: Variable Length Video Generation From Open Domain Textual Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02399/) (2022)
- [Machine learning accelerated computational fluid dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.01010/) (2021)
- [Simple diffusion: End-to-end diffusion for high resolution images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11093/) (2023)
- [MAGVIT: Masked Generative Video Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05199/) (2022)
- [A Short Note about Kinetics-600](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.01340/) (2018)
- [Photorealistic Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06662/) (2023)
- [Understanding Diffusion Objectives as the ELBO with Simple Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00848/) (2023)
- [Flexible Diffusion Modeling of Long Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11495/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 104)

- [Diffusion Forcing: Next-token Prediction Meets Full-Sequence Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01392/) (2024)
- [Self Forcing: Bridging the Train-Test Gap in Autoregressive Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08009/) (2025)
- [From Slow Bidirectional to Fast Autoregressive Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07772/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Models Are Real-Time Game Engines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14837/) (2024)
- [Rolling Forcing: Autoregressive Long Video Diffusion in Real Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25161/) (2025)
- [Self-Forcing++: Towards Minute-Scale High-Quality Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02283/) (2025)
- [History-Guided Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06764/) (2025)
- [FIFO-Diffusion: Generating Infinite Videos from Text without Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11473/) (2024)
- [Test-Time Training Done Right](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23884/) (2025)
- [AdaWorld: Learning Adaptable World Models with Latent Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18938/) (2025)
- [RELIC: Interactive Video World Model with Long-Horizon Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04040/) (2025)
- [Mixture of Contexts for Long Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21058/) (2025)
- [MotionStream: Real-Time Video Generation with Interactive Motion Controls](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01266/) (2025)
- [Simpler Diffusion (SiD2): 1.5 FID on ImageNet512 with pixel-space diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19324/) (2024)
- [Stable Video Infinity: Infinite-Length Video Generation with Error Recycling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09212/) (2025)
- [Large Video Planner Enables Generalizable Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15840/) (2025)
- [Progressive Autoregressive Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08151/) (2024)
- [Helios: Real Real-Time Long Video Generation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04379/) (2026)
- [On conditional diffusion models for PDE simulations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16415/) (2024)
- [Speculative Diffusion Decoding: Accelerating Language Generation through Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05636/) (2024)
- [Streaming Diffusion Policy: Fast Policy Synthesis with Variable Noise Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04806/) (2024)
- [AR-Diffusion: Asynchronous Video Generation with Auto-Regressive Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07418/) (2025)
- [A Fourier Space Perspective on Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11278/) (2025)
- [End-to-End Training for Autoregressive Video Diffusion via Self-Resampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15702/) (2025)
- [One Diffusion to Generate Them All](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16318/) (2024)
- [Streaming Flow Policy: Simplifying diffusion/flow-matching policies by treating action trajectories as flow trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21851/) (2025)
- [Autoregressive Diffusion Transformer for Text-to-Speech Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05551/) (2024)
- [Learning 3D Persistent Embodied World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05495/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Interactive Generative Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21853/) (2025)
- [INSPATIO-WORLD: A Real-Time 4D World Simulator via Spatiotemporal Autoregressive Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07209/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models have recently been increasingly applied to temporal data such as video, fluid mechanics simulations, or climate data. These methods generally treat subsequent frames equally regarding the amount of noise in the diffusion process. This paper explores Rolling Diffusion: a new approach that uses a sliding window denoising process. It ensures that the diffusion process progressively corrupts through time by assigning more noise to frames that appear later in a sequence, reflecting greater uncertainty about the future as the generation process unfolds. Empirically, we show that when the temporal dynamics are complex, Rolling Diffusion is superior to standard diffusion. In particular, this result is demonstrated in a video prediction task using the Kinetics-600 video dataset and in a chaotic fluid dynamics forecasting experiment.