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LEAP: Unlocking dLLM Parallelism via Lookahead Early-Convergence Token Detection

Summary

Diffusion Language Models (dLLMs) promise high parallelism but are constrained by stringent confidence thresholds. Through token-level analysis, we find many tokens converge early but fail to meet confidence standards, indicating conservatism. We propose LEAP, a training-free, plug-and-play method that uses future context filtering and multi-sequence superposition to detect early-converging tokens, enabling reliable early decoding. LEAP reduces denoising steps by ~30% and, combined with dParallel on GSM8K, achieves 7.2 tokens per step while maintaining precision, breaking reliance on high-confidence priors.

SourcearXiv Machine LearningAuthor: Haohui Zhang, Zhiye Wang, Xiaoying Gan, Xinbing Wang, Bo Jiang
LEAP: Unlocking dLLM Parallelism via Lookahead Early-Convergence Token Detection
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[2605.10980] LEAP: Unlocking dLLM Parallelism via Lookahead Early-Convergence Token Detection

[Submitted on 9 May 2026]

Title:LEAP: Unlocking dLLM Parallelism via Lookahead Early-Convergence Token Detection

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Abstract:Diffusion Language Models (dLLMs) have garnered significant attention for their potential in highly parallel processing. The parallel capabilities of existing dLLMs stem from the assumption of conditional independence at high confidence levels, which ensures negligible discrepancy between the marginal and joint distributions. However, the stringent confidence thresholds required to preserve accuracy severely constrain the scalability of parallelism. Through systematic token-level statistical analysis, we reveal that a substantial proportion of tokens converge to their correct predictions early in the denoising process yet fail to reach standard confidence thresholds, confirming that current confidence-based criteria are overly conservative. In response, we introduce LEAP (Lookahead Early-Convergence Token Detection for Accelerated Parallel Decoding). LEAP is a training-free, plug-and-play method that leverages future context filtering and multi-sequence superposition to detect early-converging tokens. By validating the alignment between early convergence and correctness, we enable reliable early decoding of these tokens. Benchmarking across diverse domains demonstrates that LEAP significantly lowers inference latency and decoding steps. Compared to confidence-based decoding, the average number of denoising steps is reduced by about 30%. On the GSM8K dataset, combining LEAP with dParallel accelerates decoding to 7.2 tokens per step while preserving model precision. LEAP effectively breaks the reliance on high-confidence priors, offering a novel paradigm for parallel decoding.

Subjects:

Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

Cite as: arXiv:2605.10980 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2605.10980v1 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.10980

arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Submission history

From: Haohui Zhang [view email] [v1] Sat, 9 May 2026 03:26:23 UTC (724 KB)

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Key points and analysis

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Key points

  • Many tokens converge correctly early in denoising but do not reach high confidence thresholds, showing current criteria are too conservative
  • LEAP detects early-converging tokens via future context filtering and multi-sequence superposition, no training required
  • LEAP reduces denoising steps by ~30% and achieves 7.2 tokens per step on GSM8K with dParallel
  • Offers a new paradigm for parallel decoding by bypassing high-confidence reliance

Highlights and analysis are generated automatically and may contain errors. Check the original source.