# Imagine Flash: Accelerating Emu Diffusion Models with Backward Distillation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.05224 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05224/

## Key facts

- Cited by 37 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 37 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 May 2024.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [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)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [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)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08718/) (2021)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [DiffWave: A Versatile Diffusion Model for Audio Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09761/) (2020)
- [Stochastic Interpolants: A Unifying Framework for Flows and Diffusions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08797/) (2023)
- [DPM-Solver++: Fast Solver for Guided Sampling of Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01095/) (2022)
- [Latent Consistency Models: Synthesizing High-Resolution Images with Few-Step Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04378/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17042/) (2023)
- [On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03142/) (2022)
- [Fast Sampling of Diffusion Models with Exponential Integrator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13902/) (2022)
- [UniPC: A Unified Predictor-Corrector Framework for Fast Sampling of Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04867/) (2023)
- [Common Diffusion Noise Schedules and Sample Steps are Flawed](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08891/) (2023)
- [Emu: Enhancing Image Generation Models Using Photogenic Needles in a Haystack](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15807/) (2023)
- [Multisample Flow Matching: Straightening Flows with Minibatch Couplings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14772/) (2023)
- [SDXL-Lightning: Progressive Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13929/) (2024)
- [T2I-CompBench++: An Enhanced and Comprehensive Benchmark for Compositional Text-to-image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06350/) (2023)
- [SnapFusion: Text-to-Image Diffusion Model on Mobile Devices within Two Seconds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00980/) (2023)
- [StyleGAN-T: Unlocking the Power of GANs for Fast Large-Scale Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09515/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14867/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Adversarial Post-Training for One-Step Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08316/) (2025)
- [Consistency Models Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14548/) (2024)
- [Autoregressive Adversarial Post-Training for Real-Time Interactive Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09350/) (2025)
- [Flash Diffusion: Accelerating Any Conditional Diffusion Model for Few Steps Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02347/) (2024)
- [Meta 3D TextureGen: Fast and Consistent Texture Generation for 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02430/) (2024)
- [SeedVR2: One-Step Video Restoration via Diffusion Adversarial Post-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05301/) (2025)
- [Adversarial Distribution Matching for Diffusion Distillation Towards Efficient Image and Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18569/) (2025)
- [SF-V: Single Forward Video Generation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04324/) (2024)
- [Motion Consistency Model: Accelerating Video Diffusion with Disentangled Motion-Appearance Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06890/) (2024)
- [LBM: Latent Bridge Matching for Fast Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07535/) (2025)
- [VideoScene: Distilling Video Diffusion Model to Generate 3D Scenes in One Step](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01956/) (2025)
- [Tuning Timestep-Distilled Diffusion Model Using Pairwise Sample Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03190/) (2024)
- [Dual-Expert Consistency Model for Efficient and High-Quality Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03123/) (2025)
- [Presto! Distilling Steps and Layers for Accelerating Music Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05167/) (2024)
- [FlexiDiT: Your Diffusion Transformer Can Easily Generate High-Quality Samples with Less Compute](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20126/) (2025)
- [Few-Step Diffusion via Score identity Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12674/) (2025)
- [Adversarial Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22475/) (2025)
- [Accelerating Video Diffusion Models via Distribution Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05899/) (2024)
- [DIFFVSGG: Diffusion-Driven Online Video Scene Graph Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13957/) (2025)
- [SD3.5-Flash: Distribution-Guided Distillation of Generative Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21318/) (2025)
- [Autoregressive Distillation of Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11295/) (2025)
- [Gated Temporal Diffusion for Stochastic Long-Term Dense Anticipation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11954/) (2024)
- [Pixel-Space Post-Training of Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17565/) (2024)
- [DMQ: Dissecting Outliers of Diffusion Models for Post-Training Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12933/) (2025)
- [FastFLUX: Pruning FLUX with Block-wise Replacement and Sandwich Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10035/) (2025)
- [Evolutionary Caching to Accelerate Your Off-the-Shelf Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15682/) (2025)
- [A Deep Generative Model for Five-Class Sleep Staging with Arbitrary Sensor Input](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15253/) (2024)
- [Solving Prior Distribution Mismatch in Diffusion Models via Optimal Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13431/) (2024)
- [Accelerate High-Quality Diffusion Models with Inner Loop Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13107/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models are a powerful generative framework, but come with expensive inference. Existing acceleration methods often compromise image quality or fail under complex conditioning when operating in an extremely low-step regime. In this work, we propose a novel distillation framework tailored to enable high-fidelity, diverse sample generation using just one to three steps. Our approach comprises three key components: (i) Backward Distillation, which mitigates training-inference discrepancies by calibrating the student on its own backward trajectory; (ii) Shifted Reconstruction Loss that dynamically adapts knowledge transfer based on the current time step; and (iii) Noise Correction, an inference-time technique that enhances sample quality by addressing singularities in noise prediction. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that our method outperforms existing competitors in quantitative metrics and human evaluations. Remarkably, it achieves performance comparable to the teacher model using only three denoising steps, enabling efficient high-quality generation.