DFlow: Enabling Verifier Information Flow in Block Diffusion Speculative Decoding
On the map: Efficient LLM inference and serving → Speculative decoding
Abstract (arXiv)
Block diffusion speculative decoding improves LLM inference efficiency by proposing a block of future tokens in parallel and verifying them with a single forward pass through the target model. However, existing methods retain only the accepted prefix and discard the rejected suffix, preventing the computation spent on these positions from benefiting subsequent drafting rounds and forcing the drafter to repeatedly reconstruct representations for future tokens from scratch. We observe that rejection only determines whether a proposed token can be committed, while the verifier representations at rejected positions can still provide useful information for subsequent predictions. Based on this observation, we propose DFlow, a simple yet effective framework that enables verifier information to flow across drafting rounds. DFlow reuses the hidden states produced by the target verifier for the rejected suffix to guide subsequent drafting without additional target computation. To effectively learn this information flow across drafting rounds, we introduce a self-condition train strategy that feeds verifier representations from earlier predictions back into subsequent predictions. Experiments on Qwen3 models across diverse benchmarks demonstrate that DFlow consistently improves draft quality and acceptance length over DFlash.
Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Speculative decoding, one of 12 directions in Efficient LLM inference and serving. Builds on 29 of its 35 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Sep 2026.
Builds on
29 of 35 references.
Closest ancestors · 17
Same direction, newest first
- 2026AngelSpec: Towards Real-World High Performance Inference with Speculative Decoding28 Jul
- 2026DSpark: Confidence-Scheduled Speculative Decoding with Semi-Autoregressive Generation6 Jul
- 2026Spec-AUF: Accept-Until-Fail Training under Train-Inference Misalignment for Masked Block Drafters2 Jul
- 2026DFlare: Scaling Up Draft Capacity for Block Diffusion Speculative Decoding1 Jun
- 2026Domino: Decoupling Causal Modeling from Autoregressive Drafting in Speculative Decoding28 May
- 2026FlexDraft: Flexible Speculative Decoding via Attention Tuning and Bonus-Guided Calibration19 May
- 2026D-PACE: Dynamic Position-Aware Cross-Entropy for Parallel Speculative Drafting12 May
- 2026DFlash: Block Diffusion for Flash Speculative Decoding5 Feb
- 2026Make Every Draft Count: Hidden State based Speculative Decoding2 Feb
- 2026DART: Diffusion-Inspired Speculative Decoding for Fast LLM Inference27 Jan
- 2025Accelerating Large-Scale Reasoning Model Inference with Sparse Self-Speculative Decoding1 Dec
- 2025SpecDiff-2: Scaling Diffusion Drafter Alignment For Faster Speculative Decoding1 Nov
5 more
- 2025EAGLE-3: Scaling up Inference Acceleration of Large Language Models via Training-Time Test3 Mar
- 2024EAGLE-2: Faster Inference of Language Models with Dynamic Draft Trees24 Jun
- 2024EAGLE: Speculative Sampling Requires Rethinking Feature Uncertainty26 Jan
- 2023Accelerating Large Language Model Decoding with Speculative Sampling2 Feb
- 2022Fast Inference from Transformers via Speculative Decoding30 Nov
Other references · 12
- 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 10,109
- 2023Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arenacited by 8,626
- 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,320
- 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,371
- 2021Program Synthesis with Large Language Modelscited by 3,637
- 2026DeepSeek-V4: Towards Highly Efficient Million-Token Context Intelligencecited by 1,040
- 2025OpenAI GPT-5 System Cardcited by 989
- 2025Large Language Diffusion Modelscited by 912
- 2026Kimi K3: Open Frontier Intelligencecited by 138
- 2023Towards Efficient Generative Large Language Model Serving: A Survey from Algorithms to Systemscited by 102
- 2025SP-MoE: Speculative Decoding and Prefetching for Accelerating MoE-based Model Inferencecited by 13
- 2026DualDecoder: Accelerate Long Context LLM Inference by Predictive Prefetchcited by 2
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.
2 papers.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026D-Loop: Looped Diffusion Drafting for Speculative Decoding
- 2026Accelerating Speculative Diffusions via Block Verification
- 2026SpecBlock: Block-Iterative Speculative Decoding with Dynamic Tree Drafting
- 2026From Positionwise Confidence to Prefix Scheduling: Verifier Skipping in Speculative Decoding
- 2026Carryover Drafting: Recycling Rejected States for Speculative Decoding
- 2026VIA-SD: Verification via Intra-Model Routing for Speculative Decoding
- 2025Fail Fast, Win Big: Rethinking the Drafting Strategy in Speculative Decoding via Diffusion LLMs
- 2026DScale: Scaling Block-Diffusion Speculative Decoding with Adaptive Verification