mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Mixture of Distributions Matters: Dynamic Sparse Attention for Efficient Video Diffusion Transformers

arXiv 2601.11641 ↗First posted 14 Jan 2026cs.CV cs.LGcited by 8

On the map: Diffusion models → Video generation

Abstract (arXiv)

While Diffusion Transformers (DiTs) have achieved notable progress in video generation, this long-sequence generation task remains constrained by the quadratic complexity inherent to self-attention mechanisms, creating significant barriers to practical deployment. Although sparse attention methods attempt to address this challenge, existing approaches either rely on oversimplified static patterns or require computationally expensive sampling operations to achieve dynamic sparsity, resulting in inaccurate pattern predictions and degraded generation quality. To overcome these limitations, we propose a underlineMixture-underlineOf-underlineDistribution DiT (MOD-DiT), a novel sampling-free dynamic attention framework that accurately models evolving attention patterns through a two-stage process. First, MOD-DiT leverages prior information from early denoising steps and adopts a distributed mixing approach to model an efficient linear approximation model, which is then used to predict mask patterns for a specific denoising interval. Second, an online block masking strategy dynamically applies these predicted masks while maintaining historical sparsity information, eliminating the need for repetitive sampling operations. Extensive evaluations demonstrate consistent acceleration and quality improvements across multiple benchmarks and model architectures, validating MOD-DiT's effectiveness for efficient, high-quality video generation while overcoming the computational limitations of traditional sparse attention approaches.

Key facts. Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 31 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 Jan 2026.

Builds on

31 of 43 references.

Closest ancestors · 12

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025LiteAttention: A Temporal Sparse Attention for Diffusion Transformers14 Nov
  2. 2025Radial Attention: O(nlog n) Sparse Attention with Energy Decay for Long Video Generation24 Jun
  3. 2025Sparse-vDiT: Unleashing the Power of Sparse Attention to Accelerate Video Diffusion Transformers3 Jun
  4. 2025Sparse VideoGen2: Accelerate Video Generation with Sparse Attention via Semantic-Aware Permutation24 May
  5. 2025Sparse VideoGen: Accelerating Video Diffusion Transformers with Spatial-Temporal Sparsity3 Feb
  6. 2024Timestep Embedding Tells: It's Time to Cache for Video Diffusion Model28 Nov
  7. 2024Adaptive Caching for Faster Video Generation with Diffusion Transformers4 Nov
  8. 2024FasterCache: Training-Free Video Diffusion Model Acceleration with High Quality25 Oct
  9. 2024CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer12 Aug
  10. 2023Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets25 Nov
  11. 2023AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning10 Jul
  12. 2023FateZero: Fusing Attentions for Zero-shot Text-based Video Editing16 Mar

Other references · 19

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  3. 2021Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windowscited by 12,082
  4. 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,029
  5. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
  6. 2020Longformer: The Long-Document Transformercited by 3,362
  7. 2023FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioningcited by 2,551
  8. 2025Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Modelscited by 2,536
  9. 2022Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Controlcited by 2,409
  10. 2024HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Modelscited by 1,597
  11. 2022Plug-and-Play Diffusion Features for Text-Driven Image-to-Image Translationcited by 897
  12. 2024Open-Sora: Democratizing Efficient Video Production for Allcited by 637
7 more
  1. 2024SageAttention: Accurate 8-Bit Attention for Plug-and-play Inference Accelerationcited by 158
  2. 2025FlexPrefill: A Context-Aware Sparse Attention Mechanism for Efficient Long-Sequence Inferencecited by 121
  3. 2025SpargeAttention: Accurate and Training-free Sparse Attention Accelerating Any Model Inferencecited by 113
  4. 2019NAT: Neural Architecture Transformer for Accurate and Compact Architecturescited by 33
  5. 2025Accelerating Diffusion Transformer via Gradient-Optimized Cachecited by 15
  6. 2024QVD: Post-training Quantization for Video Diffusion Modelscited by 14
  7. 2025Pluggable Pruning with Contiguous Layer Distillation for Diffusion Transformerscited by 7

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 8.

8 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Training-free and Adaptive Sparse Attention for Efficient Long Video Generation
  2. 2025BLADE: Block-Sparse Attention Meets Step Distillation for Efficient Video Generation
  3. 2026SPADE: An Input-Adaptive Sparse Attention Engine for Fast Video Diffusion Models Inference
  4. 2026Training-free sparse attention based on cumulative energy filtering
  5. 2025Efficient-vDiT: Efficient Video Diffusion Transformers With Attention Tile
  6. 2025Trainable Log-linear Sparse Attention for Efficient Diffusion Transformers
  7. 2024DiTFastAttn: Attention Compression for Diffusion Transformer Models
  8. 2025Bidirectional Sparse Attention for Faster Video Diffusion Training