SonicSampler: Unified Tile-Aware Kernels for LLM Sampling and Speculative Verification
On the map: Efficient LLM inference and serving → Speculative decoding
Abstract (arXiv)
Sampling in LLM inference comprises a combinatorial set of logit processing, token selection, and verification operations for speculative decoding. However, existing implementations either accelerate only subsets of this pipeline, rely on multiple kernel launches, or assume homogeneous sampling behavior across a batch, limiting support for dynamic serving workloads and preventing efficient CUDA Graph execution. We present SonicSampler, a unified suite of tile-aware Triton kernels that vertically fuses the complete sampling pipeline into a fixed, workload-aware execution model. Our kernels support dynamic per-request sampling behaviors, including grammar-constrained decoding, repetition, frequency and presence penalties, logit bias, temperature scaling, top-k / top-p / min-p filtering, and speculative verification - within a single batched kernel while remaining fully CUDA Graph-compatible. Central to our approach is a novel hierarchical two-stage top-k algorithm that achieves up to 10x speedup over competitive baselines and exploits the low-entropy structure of LLM outputs to enable efficient selection over large vocabularies. Across heterogeneous speculative decoding workloads, SonicSampler achieves up to 16x speedup over state-of-the-art baselines while preserving flexible batched execution.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Speculative decoding, one of 12 directions in Efficient LLM inference and serving. Builds on 28 of its 38 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 May 2026.
Builds on
28 of 38 references.
Closest ancestors · 5
Same direction, newest first
- 2025EAGLE-3: Scaling up Inference Acceleration of Large Language Models via Training-Time Test3 Mar
- 2024EAGLE: Speculative Sampling Requires Rethinking Feature Uncertainty26 Jan
- 2024Medusa: Simple LLM Inference Acceleration Framework with Multiple Decoding Heads19 Jan
- 2023Accelerating Large Language Model Decoding with Speculative Sampling2 Feb
- 2022Fast Inference from Transformers via Speculative Decoding30 Nov
Other references · 23
- 2015Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Networkcited by 10,076
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- 2019The Curious Case of Neural Text Degenerationcited by 2,881
- 2016Categorical Reparameterization with Gumbel-Softmaxcited by 2,708
- 2018Hierarchical Neural Story Generationcited by 1,182
- 2023SGLang: Efficient Execution of Structured Language Model Programscited by 1,107
- 2019CTRL: A Conditional Transformer Language Model for Controllable Generationcited by 754
- 2024Moshi: a speech-text foundation model for real-time dialoguecited by 536
- 2024Better & Faster Large Language Models via Multi-token Predictioncited by 344
- 2025Small Language Models are the Future of Agentic AIcited by 254
- 2025FlashInfer: Efficient and Customizable Attention Engine for LLM Inference Servingcited by 248
11 more
- 2023Universal Self-Consistency for Large Language Model Generationcited by 198
- 2023Efficient Guided Generation for Large Language Modelscited by 192
- 2024Turning Up the Heat: Min-p Sampling for Creative and Coherent LLM Outputscited by 148
- 2022Truncation Sampling as Language Model Desmoothingcited by 121
- 2025Rethinking Mixture-of-Agents: Is Mixing Different Large Language Models Beneficial?cited by 52
- 2025TileLang: A Composable Tiled Programming Model for AI Systemscited by 42
- 2025Optimizing Temperature for Language Models with Multi-Sample Inferencecited by 33
- 2025On the Effect of Sampling Diversity in Scaling LLM Inferencecited by 18
- 2023Penalty Decoding: Well Suppress the Self-Reinforcement Effect in Open-Ended Text Generationcited by 13
- 2025RadiK: Scalable and Optimized GPU-Parallel Radix Top-K Selectioncited by 5
- 2026FlashSampling: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Samplingcited by 2
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