# In-Flight KV Cache with Clean Anchors for Faster Autoregressive Video Diffusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.32540 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32540/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 60 of its 68 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Sep 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Video generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/video-generation/)
- Efficient LLM inference and serving / [Fast autoregressive visual generation](https://mlsanity.com/inference/fast-autoregressive-visual-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 60)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20314/) (2025)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17982/) (2023)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18828/) (2023)
- [Improved Distribution Matching Distillation for Fast Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14867/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Forcing: Next-token Prediction Meets Full-Sequence Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01392/) (2024)
- [Self Forcing: Bridging the Train-Test Gap in Autoregressive Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08009/) (2025)
- [LTX-Video: Realtime Video Latent Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00103/) (2024)
- [Phenaki: Variable Length Video Generation From Open Domain Textual Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02399/) (2022)
- [From Slow Bidirectional to Fast Autoregressive Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07772/) (2024)
- [Latent Video Diffusion Models for High-Fidelity Long Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13221/) (2022)
- [Pyramidal Flow Matching for Efficient Video Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05954/) (2024)
- [MCVD: Masked Conditional Video Diffusion for Prediction, Generation, and Interpolation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09853/) (2022)
- [Flexible Diffusion Modeling of Long Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11495/) (2022)
- [MAGI-1: Autoregressive Video Generation at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13211/) (2025)
- [LongLive: Real-time Interactive Long Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22622/) (2025)
- [StreamingT2V: Consistent, Dynamic, and Extendable Long Video Generation from Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14773/) (2024)
- [Long Video Generation with Time-Agnostic VQGAN and Time-Sensitive Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03638/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Few-step autoregressive video diffusion generates a long video by splitting the video into temporal chunks and generating chunk-by-chunk, each through a short sequence of denoising stages. To memorize chunks that are already generated, previous methods reconstruct a clean or less-noisy key--value (KV) cache by additional forwards to build the cache without advancing an output latent. However, every denoising forward itself already computes the in-flight KV of the current chunk. We introduce FlashForward, which directly reuses this cache to avoid the heavy cache-update-only model forwards. After the current chunk completes one denoising stage, its stage-specific cache is already available for the next chunk. Assigning one GPU to each stage therefore lets different chunks occupy different stages concurrently. This early availability has a quality cost: the resulting stage-matched history is noisy, causing appearance and motion drift among chunks. To complement it, FlashForward produces sparse auxiliary clean anchor latents before the corresponding region is generated so the generation trajectories can be stabilized by this two-sided conditioning. The two memories operate at different temporal scales: sparse clean anchor KV supplies coarse, long-range two-sided structural guidance, while dense stage-matched history preserves fine, recent evolution. With up to four GPUs, FlashForward runs 1.16--1.69× faster than HiAR and 1.42--2.92× faster than Self-Forcing for 16 FPS videos of 20 seconds or longer across 1.3B and 14B backbone scales at 480p and 720p. On VBench, for the 1.3B model at 480p, it achieves higher scores and remains stable at longer durations, demonstrating that FlashForward generates high-quality and temporally consistent videos across durations of 20s, 35s and 65s at a much faster generation speed.
