mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

SD3.5-Flash: Distribution-Guided Distillation of Generative Flows

arXiv 2509.21318 ↗First posted 25 Sep 2025cs.CV cs.AIcited by 11

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Abstract (arXiv)

We present SD3.5-Flash, an efficient few-step distillation framework that brings high-quality image generation to accessible consumer devices. Our approach distills computationally prohibitive rectified flow models through a reformulated distribution matching objective tailored specifically for few-step generation. We introduce two key innovations: "timestep sharing" to reduce gradient noise and "split-timestep fine-tuning" to improve prompt alignment. Combined with comprehensive pipeline optimizations like text encoder restructuring and specialized quantization, our system enables both rapid generation and memory-efficient deployment across different hardware configurations. This democratizes access across the full spectrum of devices, from mobile phones to desktop computers. Through extensive evaluation including large-scale user studies, we demonstrate that SD3.5-Flash consistently outperforms existing few-step methods, making advanced generative AI truly accessible for practical deployment.

Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 49 of its 55 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 25 Sep 2025.

Builds on

49 of 55 references.

References · 49

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  11. 2015Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Visioncited by 5,475
  12. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,356
37 more
  1. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
  2. 2022LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text modelscited by 4,152
  3. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,700
  4. 2022Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Modelscited by 3,045
  5. 2022DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusioncited by 3,025
  6. 2023Consistency Modelscited by 1,822
  7. 2022Scaling Autoregressive Models for Content-Rich Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,295
  8. 2023ProlificDreamer: High-Fidelity and Diverse Text-to-3D Generation with Variational Score Distillationcited by 1,219
  9. 2023ImageReward: Learning and Evaluating Human Preferences for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 1,045
  10. 2023One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillationcited by 1,019
  11. 2023GenEval: An Object-Focused Framework for Evaluating Text-to-Image Alignmentcited by 972
  12. 2023Adversarial Diffusion Distillationcited by 759
  13. 2022On Distillation of Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 725
  14. 2024Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesiscited by 684
  15. 2022StyleGAN-XL: Scaling StyleGAN to Large Diverse Datasetscited by 492
  16. 2023Consistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of Diffusioncited by 459
  17. 2023Improved Techniques for Training Consistency Modelscited by 439
  18. 2023InstaFlow: One Step is Enough for High-Quality Diffusion-Based Text-to-Image Generationcited by 395
  19. 2021Knowledge Distillation in Iterative Generative Models for Improved Sampling Speedcited by 348
  20. 2024SANA: Efficient High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Linear Diffusion Transformerscited by 340
  21. 2024Simplifying, Stabilizing and Scaling Continuous-Time Consistency Modelscited by 283
  22. 2024Fast High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Adversarial Diffusion Distillationcited by 279
  23. 2024SDXL-Lightning: Progressive Adversarial Diffusion Distillationcited by 266
  24. 2023SnapFusion: Text-to-Image Diffusion Model on Mobile Devices within Two Secondscited by 227
  25. 2023StyleGAN-T: Unlocking the Power of GANs for Fast Large-Scale Text-to-Image Synthesiscited by 212
  26. 2024Hyper-SD: Trajectory Segmented Consistency Model for Efficient Image Synthesiscited by 156
  27. 2024PIXART-δ: Fast and Controllable Image Generation with Latent Consistency Modelscited by 141
  28. 2023SwiftBrush: One-Step Text-to-Image Diffusion Model with Variational Score Distillationcited by 110
  29. 2025SANA-Sprint: One-Step Diffusion with Continuous-Time Consistency Distillationcited by 87
  30. 2024SwiftBrush v2: Make Your One-step Diffusion Model Better Than Its Teachercited by 45
  31. 2024LinFusion: 1 GPU, 1 Minute, 16K Imagecited by 43
  32. 2023MobileDiffusion: Instant Text-to-Image Generation on Mobile Devicescited by 42
  33. 2024Imagine Flash: Accelerating Emu Diffusion Models with Backward Distillationcited by 37
  34. 2024NitroFusion: High-Fidelity Single-Step Diffusion through Dynamic Adversarial Trainingcited by 17
  35. 2023Squeezing Large-Scale Diffusion Models for Mobilecited by 11
  36. 2024Diffusion Model Patching via Mixture-of-Promptscited by 11
  37. 2025Scale-wise Distillation of Diffusion Modelscited by 11

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 9.

11 papers.

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Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Flash-DMD: Towards High-Fidelity Few-Step Image Generation with Efficient Distillation and Joint Reinforcement Learning
  2. 2026DanceOPD: On-Policy Generative Field Distillation
  3. 2024EdgeFusion: On-Device Text-to-Image Generation
  4. 2026DreamLite: A Lightweight On-Device Unified Model for Image Generation and Editing
  5. 2025BLIP3o-NEXT: Next Frontier of Native Image Generation
  6. 2024Self-Corrected Flow Distillation for Consistent One-Step and Few-Step Text-to-Image Generation
  7. 2026Mage-Flow: An Efficient Native-Resolution Foundation Model for Image Generation and Editing
  8. 2025Generative AI for Vision: A Comprehensive Study of Frameworks and Applications