# Pretrained Diffusion Models Are Inherently Skipped-Step Samplers

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15233 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15233/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 26 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Aug 2025.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [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)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Improved Techniques for Training GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03498/) (2016)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17982/) (2023)
- [LSUN: Construction of a Large-scale Image Dataset using Deep Learning with Humans in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03365/) (2015)
- [Improved Precision and Recall Metric for Assessing Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06991/) (2019)
- [Pseudo Numerical Methods for Diffusion Models on Manifolds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09778/) (2022)
- [Open-Sora: Democratizing Efficient Video Production for All](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20404/) (2024)
- [Alleviating Exposure Bias in Diffusion Models through Sampling with Shifted Time Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15583/) (2023)
- [Accelerating Diffusion Sampling with Optimized Time Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17376/) (2024)
- [DRB-GAN: A Dynamic ResBlock Generative Adversarial Network for Artistic Style Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07379/) (2021)
- [Dual Graph Convolutional Networks with Transformer and Curriculum Learning for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.02366/) (2021)
- [Feature Representation Learning with Adaptive Displacement Generation and Transformer Fusion for Micro-Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04420/) (2023)
- [Learning Dynamic Style Kernels for Artistic Style Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00414/) (2023)
- [MaxFusion: Plug&Play Multi-Modal Generation in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09977/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Models For Multi-Modal Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17571/) (2024)
- [Disentangled Representation Learning for Controllable Person Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05798/) (2023)
- [Domain Generalizable Portrait Style Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04243/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models have been achieving state-of-the-art results across various generation tasks. However, a notable drawback is their sequential generation process, requiring long-sequence step-by-step generation. Existing methods, such as DDIM, attempt to reduce sampling steps by constructing a class of non-Markovian diffusion processes that maintain the same training objective. However, there remains a gap in understanding whether the original diffusion process can achieve the same efficiency without resorting to non-Markovian processes. In this paper, we provide a confirmative answer and introduce skipped-step sampling, a mechanism that bypasses multiple intermediate denoising steps in the iterative generation process, in contrast with the traditional step-by-step refinement of standard diffusion inference. Crucially, we demonstrate that this skipped-step sampling mechanism is derived from the same training objective as the standard diffusion model, indicating that accelerated sampling via skipped-step sampling via a Markovian way is an intrinsic property of pretrained diffusion models. Additionally, we propose an enhanced generation method by integrating our accelerated sampling technique with DDIM. Extensive experiments on popular pretrained diffusion models, including the OpenAI ADM, Stable Diffusion, and Open Sora models, show that our method achieves high-quality generation with significantly reduced sampling steps.