mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

ScalingAttention: Discovering Intrinsic Sparse Attention Topology for Video Diffusion Transformers

arXiv 2606.23019 ↗First posted 22 Jun 2026cs.CV cs.AIcited by 2

On the map: Diffusion models → Video generation

Abstract (arXiv)

While Diffusion Transformers (DiTs) have revolutionized high-fidelity video generation, their reliance on 3D full attention creates a quadratic computational bottleneck. Existing sparse methods face a dilemma: dynamic pruning suffers from prohibitive runtime overhead and memory fragmentation, while static heuristics fail to capture fine-grained dependencies. In this work, we propose ScalingAttention, a training-free framework grounded in a key inductive bias: while individual activations are input-dependent, the high-mass attention regions for each head rapidly converge to a stable, prompt-agnostic Intrinsic Sparse Topology. This topology is weight-encoded, scale-invariant, and efficient to extract. ScalingAttention decouples topology discovery from sparsity control via: (1) WEST (Weight-Encoded Sparse Topology), which extracts a robust block-sparse prior mask offline to eliminate runtime search; (2) FAST (Fidelity-Aware Sensitivity Tuning), which adaptively tunes head-wise sparsity based on diffusion fidelity requirements. To ensure practical acceleration, we co-design a hardware-aligned bit-wise block-sparse kernel. Experiments on Wan2.1 show up to 1.90X end-to-end speedup with superior fidelity, establishing a new Pareto frontier over state-of-the-art baselines.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 22 of its 29 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Jun 2026.

Builds on

22 of 29 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Sparse-vDiT: Unleashing the Power of Sparse Attention to Accelerate Video Diffusion Transformers3 Jun
  2. 2025Sparse VideoGen2: Accelerate Video Generation with Sparse Attention via Semantic-Aware Permutation24 May
  3. 2025VSA: Faster Video Diffusion with Trainable Sparse Attention19 May
  4. 2024Latte: Latent Diffusion Transformer for Video Generation5 Jan

Other references · 18

  1. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  2. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
  3. 2022FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Awarenesscited by 3,611
  4. 2020Longformer: The Long-Document Transformercited by 3,362
  5. 2023Efficient Streaming Language Models with Attention Sinkscited by 2,115
  6. 2023VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Modelscited by 1,755
  7. 2021Is Space-Time Attention All You Need for Video Understanding?cited by 1,609
  8. 2021Video Swin Transformercited by 1,090
  9. 2023H2O: Heavy-Hitter Oracle for Efficient Generative Inference of Large Language Modelscited by 805
  10. 2024FlashAttention-3: Fast and Accurate Attention with Asynchrony and Low-precisioncited by 507
  11. 2022DeepSpeed-MoE: Advancing Mixture-of-Experts Inference and Training to Power Next-Generation AI Scalecited by 400
  12. 2025Native Sparse Attention: Hardware-Aligned and Natively Trainable Sparse Attentioncited by 391
6 more
  1. 2023DeepCache: Accelerating Diffusion Models for Freecited by 346
  2. 2021A Variational Perspective on Diffusion-Based Generative Models and Score Matchingcited by 182
  3. 2024Flex Attention: A Programming Model for Generating Optimized Attention Kernelscited by 180
  4. 2020Sparse GPU Kernels for Deep Learningcited by 138
  5. 2025SpargeAttention: Accurate and Training-free Sparse Attention Accelerating Any Model Inferencecited by 113
  6. 2024Is Cosine-Similarity of Embeddings Really About Similarity?cited by 89

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025DraftAttention: Fast Video Diffusion via Low-Resolution Attention Guidance
  2. 2025Compact Attention: Exploiting Structured Spatio-Temporal Sparsity for Fast Video Generation
  3. 2026SPADE: An Input-Adaptive Sparse Attention Engine for Fast Video Diffusion Models Inference
  4. 2025Training-free and Adaptive Sparse Attention for Efficient Long Video Generation
  5. 2026Ride the Wave: Precision-Allocated Sparse Attention for Smooth Video Generation
  6. 2026Veda: Scalable Video Diffusion via Distilled Sparse Attention
  7. 2025LiteAttention: A Temporal Sparse Attention for Diffusion Transformers
  8. 2025Sparse VideoGen: Accelerating Video Diffusion Transformers with Spatial-Temporal Sparsity