Uni-Instruct: One-step Diffusion Model through Unified Diffusion Divergence Instruction
On the map: Diffusion models → Diffusion foundations and sampling
Abstract (arXiv)
In this paper, we unify more than 10 existing one-step diffusion distillation approaches, such as Diff-Instruct, DMD, SIM, SiD, f-distill, etc, inside a theory-driven framework which we name the textbfUni-Instruct. Uni-Instruct is motivated by our proposed diffusion expansion theory of the f-divergence family. Then we introduce key theories that overcome the intractability issue of the original expanded f-divergence, resulting in an equivalent yet tractable loss that effectively trains one-step diffusion models by minimizing the expanded f-divergence family. The novel unification introduced by Uni-Instruct not only offers new theoretical contributions that help understand existing approaches from a high-level perspective but also leads to state-of-the-art one-step diffusion generation performances. On the CIFAR10 generation benchmark, Uni-Instruct achieves record-breaking Frechet Inception Distance (FID) values of textbf1.46 for unconditional generation and textbf1.38 for conditional generation. On the ImageNet-64× 64 generation benchmark, Uni-Instruct achieves a new SoTA one-step generation FID of textbf1.02, which outperforms its 79-step teacher diffusion with a significant improvement margin of 1.33 (1.02 vs 2.35). We also apply Uni-Instruct on broader tasks like text-to-3D generation. For text-to-3D generation, Uni-Instruct gives decent results, which slightly outperforms previous methods, such as SDS and VSD, in terms of both generation quality and diversity. Both the solid theoretical and empirical contributions of Uni-Instruct will potentially help future studies on one-step diffusion distillation and knowledge transferring of diffusion models.
Key facts. Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 58 of its 74 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 May 2025.
Builds on
58 of 74 references.
Closest ancestors · 37
Same direction, newest first
- 2025Inductive Moment Matching10 Mar
- 2025One-step Diffusion Models with f-Divergence Distribution Matching21 Feb
- 2024One-Step Diffusion Distillation through Score Implicit Matching22 Oct
- 2024Adversarial Score identity Distillation: Rapidly Surpassing the Teacher in One Step19 Oct
- 2024Simplifying, Stabilizing and Scaling Continuous-Time Consistency Models14 Oct
- 2024Consistency Models Made Easy20 Jun
- 2024Multistep Distillation of Diffusion Models via Moment Matching6 Jun
- 2024EM Distillation for One-step Diffusion Models27 May
- 2024Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesis23 May
- 2024Score identity Distillation: Exponentially Fast Distillation of Pretrained Diffusion Models for One-Step Generation5 Apr
- 2024SDXS: Real-Time One-Step Latent Diffusion Models with Image Conditions25 Mar
- 2024SCott: Accelerating Diffusion Models with Stochastic Consistency Distillation3 Mar
25 more
- 2023One-Step Diffusion Distillation via Deep Equilibrium Models12 Dec
- 2023One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillation30 Nov
- 2023Improved Techniques for Training Consistency Models22 Oct
- 2023DPM-Solver-v3: Improved Diffusion ODE Solver with Empirical Model Statistics20 Oct
- 2023Latent Consistency Models: Synthesizing High-Resolution Images with Few-Step Inference6 Oct
- 2023Consistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of Diffusion1 Oct
- 2023BOOT: Data-free Distillation of Denoising Diffusion Models with Bootstrapping8 Jun
- 2023Diff-Instruct: A Universal Approach for Transferring Knowledge From Pre-trained Diffusion Models29 May
- 2023A Comprehensive Survey on Knowledge Distillation of Diffusion Models9 Apr
- 2023TRACT: Denoising Diffusion Models with Transitive Closure Time-Distillation7 Mar
- 2023Consistency Models2 Mar
- 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers19 Dec
- 2022Fast Sampling of Diffusion Models via Operator Learning24 Nov
- 2022On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Models6 Oct
- 2022All are Worth Words: A ViT Backbone for Diffusion Models25 Sep
- 2022Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models1 Jun
- 2021Tackling the Generative Learning Trilemma with Denoising Diffusion GANs15 Dec
- 2021Variational Diffusion Models1 Jul
- 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis11 May
- 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models18 Feb
- 2021Maximum Likelihood Training of Score-Based Diffusion Models22 Jan
- 2021Knowledge Distillation in Iterative Generative Models for Improved Sampling Speed7 Jan
- 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations26 Nov
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models6 Oct
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models19 Jun
Other references · 21
- 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 37,240
- 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,971
- 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,702
- 2017Deep reinforcement learning from human preferencescited by 3,912
- 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,700
- 2022DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusioncited by 3,025
- 2018Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesiscited by 2,626
- 2023ProlificDreamer: High-Fidelity and Diverse Text-to-3D Generation with Variational Score Distillationcited by 1,219
- 2023Fantasia3D: Disentangling Geometry and Appearance for High-quality Text-to-3D Content Creationcited by 687
- 2022StyleGAN-XL: Scaling StyleGAN to Large Diverse Datasetscited by 492
- 2024From Slow Bidirectional to Fast Autoregressive Video Diffusion Modelscited by 433
- 2023A Variational Perspective on Solving Inverse Problems with Diffusion Modelscited by 222
9 more
- 2022Diffusion-GAN: Training GANs with Diffusioncited by 205
- 2022Scalable Adaptive Computation for Iterative Generationcited by 195
- 20234D-fy: Text-to-4D Generation Using Hybrid Score Distillation Samplingcited by 185
- 2023UFOGen: You Forward Once Large Scale Text-to-Image Generation via Diffusion GANscited by 166
- 2023Delta Denoising Scorecited by 121
- 2023SwiftBrush: One-Step Text-to-Image Diffusion Model with Variational Score Distillationcited by 110
- 2024Diff-Instruct++: Training One-step Text-to-image Generator Model to Align with Human Preferencescited by 31
- 2024Flow Generator Matchingcited by 26
- 2024Physics Informed Distillation for Diffusion Modelscited by 13
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 5; 2026: 8.
13 papers.
Sort:
By area:
- 2025Ultra-Fast Language Generation via Discrete Diffusion Divergence Instructcited by 16
- 2026Data-Forcing Distillation: Restoring Diversity and Fidelity in Few-Step Video Generationcited by 9
- 2025Modular MeanFlow: Towards Stable and Scalable One-Step Generative Modelingcited by 8
- 2026TDM-R1: Reinforcing Few-Step Diffusion Models with Non-Differentiable Rewardcited by 7
- 2025Soft-Di[M]O: Improving One-Step Discrete Image Generation with Soft Embeddingscited by 6
- 2026Ultra Fast PDE Solving via Physics Guided Few-step Diffusioncited by 2
- 2026Consistency Regularised Gradient Flows for Inverse Problemscited by 2
- 2025One-step Diffusion Models with Bregman Density Ratio Matchingcited by 1
- 2025Masked Auto-Regressive Variational Acceleration: Fast Inference Makes Practical Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026ZeroDiff++: Substantial Unseen Visual-semantic Correlation in Zero-shot Learningcited by 0
- 2026Unbiased Diffusion Variational Inversion via Principled Posterior Matchingcited by 0
- 2026Diffusion Distillation for Efficient Weather Ensemblescited by 0
1 more
- 2026Visualizing Distribution Coverage in Generative Diffusion Models30 Sep 2026
- 2026Diffusion Distillation for Efficient Weather Ensembles27 Aug 2026
- 2026Data-Forcing Distillation: Restoring Diversity and Fidelity in Few-Step Video Generation16 Jun 2026
- 2026Unbiased Diffusion Variational Inversion via Principled Posterior Matching24 May 2026
- 2026Consistency Regularised Gradient Flows for Inverse Problems8 May 2026
- 2026TDM-R1: Reinforcing Few-Step Diffusion Models with Non-Differentiable Reward8 Mar 2026
- 2026ZeroDiff++: Substantial Unseen Visual-semantic Correlation in Zero-shot Learning12 Feb 2026
- 2026Ultra Fast PDE Solving via Physics Guided Few-step Diffusion3 Feb 2026
- 2025Masked Auto-Regressive Variational Acceleration: Fast Inference Makes Practical Reinforcement Learning19 Nov 2025
- 2025One-step Diffusion Models with Bregman Density Ratio Matching19 Oct 2025
- 2025Ultra-Fast Language Generation via Discrete Diffusion Divergence Instruct29 Sep 2025
- 2025Soft-Di[M]O: Improving One-Step Discrete Image Generation with Soft Embeddings26 Sep 2025
1 more
- 2025Ultra-Fast Language Generation via Discrete Diffusion Divergence Instructcited by 16
- 2026Data-Forcing Distillation: Restoring Diversity and Fidelity in Few-Step Video Generationcited by 9
- 2026TDM-R1: Reinforcing Few-Step Diffusion Models with Non-Differentiable Rewardcited by 7
- 2025Soft-Di[M]O: Improving One-Step Discrete Image Generation with Soft Embeddingscited by 6
- 2026Consistency Regularised Gradient Flows for Inverse Problemscited by 2
- 2025One-step Diffusion Models with Bregman Density Ratio Matchingcited by 1
- 2025Masked Auto-Regressive Variational Acceleration: Fast Inference Makes Practical Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026Diffusion Distillation for Efficient Weather Ensemblescited by 0
- 2026Visualizing Distribution Coverage in Generative Diffusion Modelscited by 0
- 2026Visualizing Distribution Coverage in Generative Diffusion Models30 Sep 2026
- 2026Diffusion Distillation for Efficient Weather Ensembles27 Aug 2026
- 2026Data-Forcing Distillation: Restoring Diversity and Fidelity in Few-Step Video Generation16 Jun 2026
- 2026Consistency Regularised Gradient Flows for Inverse Problems8 May 2026
- 2026TDM-R1: Reinforcing Few-Step Diffusion Models with Non-Differentiable Reward8 Mar 2026
- 2025Masked Auto-Regressive Variational Acceleration: Fast Inference Makes Practical Reinforcement Learning19 Nov 2025
- 2025One-step Diffusion Models with Bregman Density Ratio Matching19 Oct 2025
- 2025Ultra-Fast Language Generation via Discrete Diffusion Divergence Instruct29 Sep 2025
- 2025Soft-Di[M]O: Improving One-Step Discrete Image Generation with Soft Embeddings26 Sep 2025
- 2025Modular MeanFlow: Towards Stable and Scalable One-Step Generative Modelingcited by 8
- 2026Ultra Fast PDE Solving via Physics Guided Few-step Diffusioncited by 2
- 2026ZeroDiff++: Substantial Unseen Visual-semantic Correlation in Zero-shot Learningcited by 0
- 2026Unbiased Diffusion Variational Inversion via Principled Posterior Matchingcited by 0
- 2026Unbiased Diffusion Variational Inversion via Principled Posterior Matching24 May 2026
- 2026ZeroDiff++: Substantial Unseen Visual-semantic Correlation in Zero-shot Learning12 Feb 2026
- 2026Ultra Fast PDE Solving via Physics Guided Few-step Diffusion3 Feb 2026
- 2025Modular MeanFlow: Towards Stable and Scalable One-Step Generative Modeling24 Aug 2025
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2024SlimFlow: Training Smaller One-Step Diffusion Models with Rectified Flow
- 2025VarDiU: A Variational Diffusive Upper Bound for One-Step Diffusion Distillation
- 2025Understanding Generalization in Diffusion Distillation via Probability Flow Distance
- 2026Consistent Distribution Matching for Data-Free Diffusion Distillation
- 2025On the Design of One-step Diffusion via Shortcutting Flow Paths
- 2025Diffusion As Self-Distillation: End-to-End Latent Diffusion In One Model
- 2026A Tutorial on Diffusion Theory: From Differential Equations to Diffusion Models
- 2025From Structure to Detail: Hierarchical Distillation for Efficient Diffusion Model