Towards Efficient Vision State Space Models via Token Merging
On the map: Efficient LLM inference and serving → Token pruning and merging for ViTs
Abstract (arXiv)
State Space Models (SSMs) have emerged as powerful architectures in computer vision, yet improving their computational efficiency remains crucial for practical and scalable deployment.While token reduction serves as an effective approach for model efficiency, applying it to SSMs requires careful consideration of their unique sequential modeling capabilities.In this work, we propose MaMe, a token-merging strategy tailored for SSM-based vision models.MaMe addresses two key challenges: quantifying token importance and preserving sequential properties. Our approach leverages the state transition parameter Delta as an informativeness measure and introduces strategic token arrangements to preserve sequential information flow.Extensive experiments demonstrate that MaMe achieves superior efficiency-performance trade-offs for both fine-tuned and off-the-shelf models. Particularly, our approach maintains robustness even under aggressive token reduction where existing methods undergo significant performance degradation.Beyond image classification, MaMe shows strong generalization capabilities across video and audio domains, establishing an effective approach for enhancing efficiency in diverse SSM applications.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Token pruning and merging for ViTs, one of 12 directions in Efficient LLM inference and serving. Builds on 33 of its 40 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 Aug 2025.
Builds on
33 of 40 references.
Closest ancestors · 7
Same direction, newest first
- 2024Exploring Token Pruning in Vision State Space Models27 Sep
- 2024Vote&Mix: Plug-and-Play Token Reduction for Efficient Vision Transformer30 Aug
- 2024Efficient Visual Transformer by Learnable Token Merging21 Jul
- 2024ALGM: Adaptive Local-then-Global Token Merging for Efficient Semantic Segmentation with Plain Vision Transformers14 Jun
- 2023Token Fusion: Bridging the Gap between Token Pruning and Token Merging2 Dec
- 2023PPT: Token Pruning and Pooling for Efficient Vision Transformers3 Oct
- 2022Token Merging: Your ViT But Faster17 Oct
Other references · 26
- 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 30,186
- 2023Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spacescited by 4,718
- 2020Training data-efficient image transformers & distillation through attentioncited by 4,586
- 2021Efficiently Modeling Long Sequences with Structured State Spacescited by 2,465
- 2021Video Swin Transformercited by 1,091
- 2024Vision Mamba: Efficient Visual Representation Learning with Bidirectional State Space Modelcited by 1,056
- 2024VMamba: Visual State Space Modelcited by 969
- 2021DynamicViT: Efficient Vision Transformers with Dynamic Token Sparsificationcited by 864
- 2022Simplified State Space Layers for Sequence Modelingcited by 788
- 2018Speech Commands: A Dataset for Limited-Vocabulary Speech Recognitioncited by 752
- 2021AST: Audio Spectrogram Transformercited by 643
- 2020HiPPO: Recurrent Memory with Optimal Polynomial Projectionscited by 605
14 more
- 2022On the Parameterization and Initialization of Diagonal State Space Modelscited by 424
- 2022Not All Patches are What You Need: Expediting Vision Transformers via Token Reorganizationscited by 363
- 2022Diagonal State Spaces are as Effective as Structured State Spacescited by 350
- 2024VideoMamba: State Space Model for Efficient Video Understandingcited by 328
- 2024MambaVision: A Hybrid Mamba-Transformer Vision Backbonecited by 224
- 2021Adaptive Token Sampling For Efficient Vision Transformerscited by 183
- 2024PointMamba: A Simple State Space Model for Point Cloud Analysiscited by 167
- 2022Liquid Structural State-Space Modelscited by 136
- 2024ZigMa: A DiT-style Zigzag Mamba Diffusion Modelcited by 84
- 2022Beyond Attentive Tokens: Incorporating Token Importance and Diversity for Efficient Vision Transformerscited by 47
- 2024Audio Mamba: Bidirectional State Space Model for Audio Representation Learningcited by 37
- 2024Multi-criteria Token Fusion with One-step-ahead Attention for Efficient Vision Transformerscited by 26
- 2024VideoMamba: Spatio-Temporal Selective State Space Modelcited by 25
- 2022Dynamic Spatial Sparsification for Efficient Vision Transformers and Convolutional Neural Networkscited by 24
Built on by
Not cited yet.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026MaMe & MaRe: Matrix-Based Token Merging and Restoration for Efficient Visual Perception and Synthesis
- 2024Mamba2D: A Natively Multi-Dimensional State-Space Model for Vision Tasks
- 2024V"Mean"ba: Visual State Space Models only need 1 hidden dimension
- 2025Sequential Token Merging: Revisiting Hidden States
- 2026MFil-Mamba: Multi-Filter Scanning for Spatial Redundancy-Aware Visual State Space Models
- 2025Fast Vision Mamba: Pooling Spatial Dimensions for Accelerated Processing
- 2024Rethinking Token Reduction for State Space Models
- 2024Efficient Time Series Processing for Transformers and State-Space Models through Token Merging