aiqbench analysis
This research introduces Looped Diffusion Transformer (Looped-DiT), a method that enhances text-to-image generation by iteratively refining internal representations through repeated execution of shared Transformer blocks. By implementing deep supervision and self-modulating attention, the approach stabilizes feature updates, allowing a significantly smaller model to outperform much larger baselines while reducing inference compute requirements. The study demonstrates that increasing computational depth via looping yields superior efficiency gains compared to simply adding more denoising steps or parameters.
Looped Diffusion Transformer
arXiv:2609.40305v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Improving text-to-image models has traditionally relied on increasing model size or the number of denoising steps. In this work, we explore an alternative way to scale computation by repeatedly running shared Transformer blocks within each denoising step, effectively increasing computational depth while keeping the parameter count fixed. This looped computation enables iterative refinement of internal representations without explicit reasoning tokens. However, naive looping fails to consistently improve image quality. We trace this problem to weak supervision across intermediate loops and unregulated attention updates that progressively erode local information. To overcome these challenges, we propose Looped Diffusion Transformer (Looped-DiT), which combines deep supervision across intermediate loops with self-modulating attention to stabilize looped feature updates. Under matched-parameter and matched-compute settings, Looped-DiT consistently outperforms non-looped baselines. Notably, a 260M-parameter looped model can surpass a model 6.5x larger across multiple text-to-image benchmarks while requiring 4.9x lower inference compute. Beyond this performance gain, we find that looped computation can offer a more effective form of iterative computation for diffusion models, with increasing loop depth yielding larger gains than adding more denoising steps under a fixed inference budget. Furthermore, deeper loops can progressively correct mistakes made in earlier loops, exhibiting behaviors suggestive of latent reasoning. Together, these results show that looped computation offers a promising way to scale visual generation models.
Abstract:Improving text-to-image models has traditionally relied on increasing model size or the number of denoising steps. In this work, we explore an alternative way to scale computation by repeatedly running shared Transformer blocks within each denoising step, effectively increasing computational depth while keeping the parameter count fixed. This looped computation enables iterative refinement of internal representations without explicit reasoning tokens. However, naive looping fails to consistently improve image quality. We trace this problem to weak supervision across intermediate loops and unregulated attention updates that progressively erode local information. To overcome these challenges, we propose Looped Diffusion Transformer (Looped-DiT), which combines deep supervision across intermediate loops with self-modulating attention to stabilize looped feature updates. Under matched-parameter and matched-compute settings, Looped-DiT consistently outperforms non-looped baselines. Notably, a 260M-parameter looped model can surpass a model 6.5x larger across multiple text-to-image benchmarks while requiring 4.9x lower inference compute. Beyond this performance gain, we find that looped computation can offer a more effective form of iterative computation for diffusion models, with increasing loop depth yielding larger gains than adding more denoising steps under a fixed inference budget. Furthermore, deeper loops can progressively correct mistakes made in earlier loops, exhibiting behaviors suggestive of latent reasoning. Together, these results show that looped computation offers a promising way to scale visual generation models.
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
arXiv:2609.40305 [cs.CV]
(or arXiv:2609.40305v1 [cs.CV] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.40305 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 315 words
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