# Phased Consistency Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.18407 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18407/

## Key facts

- Cited by 85 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 28 of its 75 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 May 2024.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [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)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)
- [Human Preference Score v2: A Solid Benchmark for Evaluating Human Preferences of Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09341/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Consistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02279/) (2023)
- [Improved Techniques for Training Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14189/) (2023)
- [SDXL-Lightning: Progressive Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13929/) (2024)
- [Flow Matching on General Geometries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03660/) (2023)
- [Hyper-SD: Trajectory Segmented Consistency Model for Efficient Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13686/) (2024)
- [Gen-L-Video: Multi-Text to Long Video Generation via Temporal Co-Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18264/) (2023)
- [Lumina-T2X: Transforming Text into Any Modality, Resolution, and Duration via Flow-based Large Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05945/) (2024)
- [TRACT: Denoising Diffusion Models with Transitive Closure Time-Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04248/) (2023)
- [Self-Rectifying Diffusion Sampling with Perturbed-Attention Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17377/) (2024)
- [Distilling Diffusion Models into Conditional GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05967/) (2024)
- [Progressive Distillation for Fast Sampling of Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00512/) (2022)
- [Multistep Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06807/) (2024)
- [CoMat: Aligning Text-to-Image Diffusion Model with Image-to-Text Concept Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03653/) (2024)
- [Trajectory Consistency Distillation: Improved Latent Consistency Distillation by Semi-Linear Consistency Function with Trajectory Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19159/) (2024)
- [Stable Target Field for Reduced Variance Score Estimation in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00670/) (2023)
- [AnimateLCM: Computation-Efficient Personalized Style Video Generation without Personalized Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00769/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 85)

- [Navigation World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03572/) (2024)
- [Self-Forcing++: Towards Minute-Scale High-Quality Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02283/) (2025)
- [Diffusion Adversarial Post-Training for One-Step Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08316/) (2025)
- [Hunyuan-GameCraft: High-dynamic Interactive Game Video Generation with Hybrid History Condition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17201/) (2025)
- [Align Your Flow: Scaling Continuous-Time Flow Map Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14603/) (2025)
- [Large Scale Diffusion Distillation via Score-Regularized Continuous-Time Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08431/) (2025)
- [LongCat-Video Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22200/) (2025)
- [DiffuEraser: A Diffusion Model for Video Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10018/) (2025)
- [Kling-Omni Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16776/) (2025)
- [Context Forcing: Consistent Autoregressive Video Generation with Long Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06028/) (2026)
- [MiniMax-Remover: Taming Bad Noise Helps Video Object Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24873/) (2025)
- [Decoupled DMD: CFG Augmentation as the Spear, Distribution Matching as the Shield](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22677/) (2025)
- [AlphaFlow: Understanding and Improving MeanFlow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20771/) (2025)
- [Transition Models: Rethinking the Generative Learning Objective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04394/) (2025)
- [SenseFlow: Scaling Distribution Matching for Flow-based Text-to-Image Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00523/) (2025)
- [Unleashing Vecset Diffusion Model for Fast Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16302/) (2025)
- [AnyFlow: Any-Step Video Diffusion Model with On-Policy Flow Map Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13724/) (2026)
- [Phased DMD: Few-step Distribution Matching Distillation via Score Matching within Subintervals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27684/) (2025)
- [VORTA: Efficient Video Diffusion via Routing Sparse Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18809/) (2025)
- [Diversity-Preserved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Visual Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03139/) (2026)
- [NitroFusion: High-Fidelity Single-Step Diffusion through Dynamic Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02030/) (2024)
- [Flash-DMD: Towards High-Fidelity Few-Step Image Generation with Efficient Distillation and Joint Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20549/) (2025)
- [AsymRnR: Video Diffusion Transformers Acceleration with Asymmetric Reduction and Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11706/) (2024)
- [FreqPolicy: Efficient Flow-based Visuomotor Policy via Frequency Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08822/) (2025)
- [Salt: Self-Consistent Distribution Matching with Cache-Aware Training for Fast Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03118/) (2026)
- [Adversarial Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22475/) (2025)
- [Target-Driven Distillation: Consistency Distillation with Target Timestep Selection and Decoupled Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.01347/) (2024)
- [SwiftVideo: A Unified Framework for Few-Step Video Generation through Trajectory-Distribution Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06082/) (2025)
- [Sparse Video Generation Propels Real-World Beyond-the-View Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.05827/) (2026)
- [Language-Conditioned World Modeling for Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26741/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Consistency Models (CMs) have made significant progress in accelerating the generation of diffusion models. However, their application to high-resolution, text-conditioned image generation in the latent space remains unsatisfactory. In this paper, we identify three key flaws in the current design of Latent Consistency Models (LCMs). We investigate the reasons behind these limitations and propose Phased Consistency Models (PCMs), which generalize the design space and address the identified limitations. Our evaluations demonstrate that PCMs outperform LCMs across 1--16 step generation settings. While PCMs are specifically designed for multi-step refinement, they achieve comparable 1-step generation results to previously state-of-the-art specifically designed 1-step methods. Furthermore, we show the methodology of PCMs is versatile and applicable to video generation, enabling us to train the state-of-the-art few-step text-to-video generator. Our code is available at https://github.com/G-U-N/Phased-Consistency-Model.