# DDK: Distilling Domain Knowledge for Efficient Large Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16154 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16154/

## Key facts

- Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Knowledge distillation for LLMs, one of 12 directions in Knowledge distillation.
- Builds on 50 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Jul 2024.

## Placed in

- Knowledge distillation / [Knowledge distillation for LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/distill/knowledge-distillation-for-llms/)

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

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08361/) (2020)
- [Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05457/) (2018)
- [Finetuned Language Models Are Zero-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01652/) (2021)
- [Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05862/) (2022)
- [Program Synthesis with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07732/) (2021)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [Scaling Instruction-Finetuned Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11416/) (2022)
- [FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08691/) (2023)
- [Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07682/) (2022)
- [CommonsenseQA: A Question Answering Challenge Targeting Commonsense Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00937/) (2018)
- [Knowledge Distillation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05525/) (2020)
- [PaLM 2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10403/) (2023)
- [On-Policy Distillation of Language Models: Learning from Self-Generated Mistakes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13649/) (2023)
- [RACE: Large-scale ReAding Comprehension Dataset From Examinations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04683/) (2017)
- [Distilling Step-by-Step! Outperforming Larger Language Models with Less Training Data and Smaller Model Sizes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02301/) (2023)
- [MiniCPM: Unveiling the Potential of Small Language Models with Scalable Training Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06395/) (2024)
- [C-Eval: A Multi-Level Multi-Discipline Chinese Evaluation Suite for Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08322/) (2023)
- [Instruction Tuning with GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03277/) (2023)
- [Baichuan 2: Open Large-scale Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10305/) (2023)
- [Textbooks Are All You Need II: phi-1.5 technical report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05463/) (2023)
- [Sheared LLaMA: Accelerating Language Model Pre-training via Structured Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06694/) (2023)
- [DoReMi: Optimizing Data Mixtures Speeds Up Language Model Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10429/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [OpenCoder: The Open Cookbook for Top-Tier Code Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04905/) (2024)
- [NL2Repo-Bench: Towards Long-Horizon Repository Generation Evaluation of Coding Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12730/) (2025)
- [Uni-OPD: Unifying On-Policy Distillation with a Dual-Perspective Recipe](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.03677/) (2026)
- [ArtifactsBench: Bridging the Visual-Interactive Gap in LLM Code Generation Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04952/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Model Extraction Attacks and Defenses for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22521/) (2025)
- [CriticLean: Critic-Guided Reinforcement Learning for Mathematical Formalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06181/) (2025)
- [SWE-Compass: Towards Unified Evaluation of Agentic Coding Abilities for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05459/) (2025)
- [Collaborative Distillation Strategies for Parameter-Efficient Language Model Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15198/) (2025)
- [EfficientNav: Towards On-Device Object-Goal Navigation with Navigation Map Caching and Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.18546/) (2025)
- [Towards Harnessing the Collaborative Power of Large and Small Models for Domain Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17421/) (2025)
- [Few-Shot Knowledge Distillation of LLMs With Counterfactual Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21631/) (2025)
- [Large Language Models for Bioinformatics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06271/) (2025)
- [Accurate Sublayer Pruning for Large Language Models by Exploiting Latency and Tunability Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03510/) (2025)
- [Teaching Audio Models to Reason: A Unified Framework for Source- and Layer-wise Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18579/) (2025)
- [Efficient Large Language Model Inference with Neural Block Linearization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21077/) (2025)
- [A Survey of the State-of-the-Art in Conversational Question Answering Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.05716/) (2025)
- [Learning without Global Backpropagation via Synergistic Information Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03273/) (2025)
- [LANTERN: Scalable Distillation of Large Language Models for Job-Person Fit and Explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05490/) (2025)
- [When Cloud Agents Meet Device Agents: Lessons from Hybrid Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30102/) (2026)
- [SAB-LVLM: Significance-Aware Binarization for Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.01876/) (2026)
- [Multi-Level Decoupled Relational Distillation for Heterogeneous Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06189/) (2025)
- [Fast Reasoning Segmentation for Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12368/) (2025)
- [Following the Teacher's Footsteps: Scheduled Checkpoint Distillation for Domain-Specific LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10114/) (2026)
- [Domain Mixture Design via Log-Likelihood Differences for Aligning Language Models with a Target Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16622/) (2026)
- [FLoKD: Adaptive Knowledge Distillation for Federated Low-Rank LLM over Wireless Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13580/) (2026)
- [COFFEQA: Counterfactual-Guided Few-Shot Distillation for LLM Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12837/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite the advanced intelligence abilities of large language models (LLMs) in various applications, they still face significant computational and storage demands. Knowledge Distillation (KD) has emerged as an effective strategy to improve the performance of a smaller LLM (i.e., the student model) by transferring knowledge from a high-performing LLM (i.e., the teacher model). Prevailing techniques in LLM distillation typically use a black-box model API to generate high-quality pretrained and aligned datasets, or utilize white-box distillation by altering the loss function to better transfer knowledge from the teacher LLM. However, these methods ignore the knowledge differences between the student and teacher LLMs across domains. This results in excessive focus on domains with minimal performance gaps and insufficient attention to domains with large gaps, reducing overall performance. In this paper, we introduce a new LLM distillation framework called DDK, which dynamically adjusts the composition of the distillation dataset in a smooth manner according to the domain performance differences between the teacher and student models, making the distillation process more stable and effective. Extensive evaluations show that DDK significantly improves the performance of student models, outperforming both continuously pretrained baselines and existing knowledge distillation methods by a large margin.