# Acceleration Multiple Heads Decoding for LLM via Dynamic Tree Attention

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.05947 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05947/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 13 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Feb 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [Fast Inference from Transformers via Speculative Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.17192/) (2022)
- [Accelerating Large Language Model Decoding with Speculative Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01318/) (2023)
- [Medusa: Simple LLM Inference Acceleration Framework with Multiple Decoding Heads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10774/) (2024)
- [Fast Transformer Decoding: One Write-Head is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02150/) (2019)
- [Blockwise Parallel Decoding for Deep Autoregressive Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.03115/) (2018)
- [Accelerating Transformer Inference for Translation via Parallel Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10427/) (2023)
- [Accelerating Feedforward Computation via Parallel Nonlinear Equation Solving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03629/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multiple heads decoding accelerates the inference of Large Language Models (LLMs) by predicting next several tokens simultaneously. It generates and verifies multiple candidate sequences in parallel via tree attention with a fixed structure. In this paper, we replace the fixed tree attention with dynamic tree attention on multiple head decoding, specifically in the context of MEDUSA. We propose a simple and low complexity strategy to generate candidates and construct the dynamic tree structure. Preliminary experiments show that the proposed method improves the decoding efficiency of multiple head decoding for LLMs while maintaining the generation quality. This result demonstrates the potential for improvement of multiple head decoding in candidate generation.
