# DiCache: Let Diffusion Model Determine Its Own Cache

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17356 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17356/

## Key facts

- Cited by 42 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 43 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Aug 2025.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [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)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14135/) (2022)
- [Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20314/) (2025)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03603/) (2024)
- [AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04725/) (2023)
- [Qwen-Image Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02324/) (2025)
- [PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00426/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Diffusion Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17042/) (2023)
- [On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03142/) (2022)
- [LTX-Video: Realtime Video Latent Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00103/) (2024)
- [VideoCrafter2: Overcoming Data Limitations for High-Quality Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09047/) (2024)
- [Timestep Embedding Tells: It's Time to Cache for Video Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19108/) (2024)
- [Sparse VideoGen: Accelerating Video Diffusion Transformers with Spatial-Temporal Sparsity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01776/) (2025)
- [Delta-DiT: A Training-Free Acceleration Method Tailored for Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01125/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [Flow caching for autoregressive video generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10825/) (2026)
- [A Survey on Cache Methods in Diffusion Models: Toward Efficient Multi-Modal Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19755/) (2025)
- [SeaCache: Spectral-Evolution-Aware Cache for Accelerating Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18993/) (2026)
- [MeanCache: From Instantaneous to Average Velocity for Accelerating Flow Matching Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.19961/) (2026)
- [SVG-EAR: Parameter-Free Linear Compensation for Sparse Video Generation via Error-aware Routing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08982/) (2026)
- [Efficient Video Diffusion Models: Advancements and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15911/) (2026)
- [RegionE: Adaptive Region-Aware Generation for Efficient Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25590/) (2025)
- [ZEUS: Accelerating Diffusion Models with Only Second-Order Predictor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01552/) (2026)
- [Motion-Aware Caching for Efficient Autoregressive Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01725/) (2026)
- [TAP: A Token-Adaptive Predictor Framework for Training-Free Diffusion Acceleration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03792/) (2026)
- [ResilPhase: Plug-and-Play Phase Mapping and Noise-Resilient Macro-Trajectory Extrapolation for Diffusion Acceleration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.26769/) (2026)
- [WorldCache: Content-Aware Caching for Accelerated Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22286/) (2026)
- [ReCache: Learning Budget-Aware Caching Schedules for Diffusion Models via REINFORCE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06060/) (2026)
- [Budget-Constrained Step-Level Diffusion Caching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13496/) (2026)
- [DiffSparse: Accelerating Diffusion Transformers with Learned Token Sparsity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03674/) (2026)
- [Accelerating Rectified Flow Models via Trajectory-Aware Caching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16789/) (2026)
- [Chain-of-Trajectories: Unlocking the Intrinsic Generative Optimality of Diffusion Models via Graph-Theoretic Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14704/) (2026)
- [Not All Tokens Need 40 Steps: Heterogeneous Step Allocation in Diffusion Transformers for Efficient Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06892/) (2026)
- [OTCache: Optimal Transport for Geometry-Aware Caching in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31026/) (2026)
- [ACID: Adaptive Caching for vIDeo generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12358/) (2026)
- [Accelerating Masked Diffusion Large Language Models: A Survey of Efficient Inference Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12829/) (2026)
- [OnlineCache: Learning Dynamic Caching Policies with Error Correction for Efficient Diffusion Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.29398/) (2026)
- [BAG: Budget-Aware Gating for Diffusion Caching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09231/) (2026)
- [EpaCache: Error-Propagation-Aware Caching for Accelerating Diffusion-Based Visual Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29264/) (2026)
- [LayerCache: Exploiting Layer-wise Velocity Heterogeneity for Efficient Flow Matching Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16492/) (2026)
- [Muninn: Your Trajectory Diffusion Model But Faster](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09999/) (2026)
- [RhymeFlow: Training-Free Acceleration for Video Generation with Asynchronous Denoising Flow Scheduling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06309/) (2026)
- [SyncCache: Exploiting Asymmetric Dynamics for Fast Audio-Driven Portrait Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30849/) (2026)
- [GVCCTurbo: Rate-Compute Quality Scheduling for Codebook Driven Generative Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.03517/) (2026)
- [DriveCache: Action-Aware Caching for Driving World Model Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.16354/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent years have witnessed the rapid development of acceleration techniques for diffusion models, especially caching-based acceleration methods. These studies seek to answer two fundamental questions: "When to cache" and "How to use cache", typically relying on predefined empirical laws or dataset-level priors to determine caching timings and adopting handcrafted rules for multi-step cache utilization. However, given the highly dynamic nature of the diffusion process, they often exhibit limited generalizability and fail to cope with diverse samples. In this paper, a strong sample-specific correlation is revealed between the variation patterns of the shallow-layer feature differences in the diffusion model and those of deep-layer features. Moreover, we have observed that the features from different model layers form similar trajectories. Based on these observations, we present DiCache, a novel training-free adaptive caching strategy for accelerating diffusion models at runtime, answering both when and how to cache within a unified framework. Specifically, DiCache is composed of two principal components: (1) Online Probe Profiling Scheme leverages a shallow-layer online probe to obtain an on-the-fly indicator for the caching error in real time, enabling the model to dynamically customize the caching schedule for each sample. (2) Dynamic Cache Trajectory Alignment adaptively approximates the deep-layer feature output from multi-step historical caches based on the shallow-layer feature trajectory, facilitating higher visual quality. Extensive experiments validate DiCache's capability in achieving higher efficiency and improved fidelity over state-of-the-art approaches on various leading diffusion models including WAN 2.1, HunyuanVideo and Flux.