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Autoregressive decoding is bottlenecked by its sequential nature. Speculative decoding has become a standard way to accelerate inference by using a fast draft model to predict upcoming tokens from a slower target model, and then verifying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Tanishq Kumar , Tri Dao , Avner May

The auto-regressive decoding of Large Language Models (LLMs) results in significant overheads in their hardware performance. While recent research has investigated various speculative decoding techniques for multi-token generation, these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-01 Hao Mark Chen , Wayne Luk , Ka Fai Cedric Yiu , Rui Li , Konstantin Mishchenko , Stylianos I. Venieris , Hongxiang Fan

Speculative decoding accelerates LLM inference by drafting future tokens with a small model, but drafter models degrade sharply under template perturbation and long-context inputs. We identify a previously-unreported phenomenon we call…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Doğaç Eldenk , Payal Mohapatra , Yigitcan Comlek , Kaan Oktay , Hongyang Zhang , Stephen Xia

Speculative decoding accelerates memory-bound LLM inference without quality degradation by using a fast drafter to propose multiple candidate tokens and the target model to verify them in parallel. However, conventional sequential…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Yaojie Zhang , Jianuo Huang , Junlong Ke , Yuhang Han , Yongji Long , Tianchen Zhao , Biqing Qi , Linfeng Zhang

Speculative decoding is a powerful technique that attempts to circumvent the autoregressive constraint of modern Large Language Models (LLMs). The aim of speculative decoding techniques is to improve the average inference time of a large,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-25 Sudhanshu Agrawal , Wonseok Jeon , Mingu Lee

Speculative decoding accelerates large language model (LLM) inference by using a small draft model to generate candidate tokens for a larger target model to verify. The efficacy of this technique hinges on the trade-off between the time…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Jiebin Zhang , Zhenghan Yu , Liang Wang , Nan Yang , Eugene J. Yu , Zheng Li , Yifan Song , Dawei Zhu , Xingxing Zhang , Furu Wei , Sujian Li

Speculative decoding has emerged as a promising technique for large language model (LLM) inference by accelerating autoregressive decoding via draft-then-verify. This paper studies a new edge scenario with multi-user inference, where draft…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Yaodan Xu , Sheng Zhou , Zhisheng Niu

Speculative decoding (SD) accelerates large language model (LLM) inference by using a smaller model to draft future tokens, which are then verified by the target LLM. This preserves generation quality by accepting only aligned tokens.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-08 Taehyeon Kim , Hojung Jung , Se-Young Yun

As deep learning becomes more expensive, both in terms of time and compute, inefficiencies in machine learning (ML) training prevent practical usage of state-of-the-art models for most users. The newest model architectures are simply too…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-07-15 Kabir Nagrecha

Large Language Models (LLMs) have become essential in advancing natural language processing (NLP) tasks, but their sequential token generation limits inference speed. Multi-Draft Speculative Decoding (MDSD) offers a promising solution by…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-11-11 Ryan Sun , Tianyi Zhou , Xun Chen , Lichao Sun

Speculative decoding accelerates LLM inference by letting a small drafter propose multiple tokens which a large target model verifies once per speculation step. As vocabularies scale past 10e5 tokens,verification cost in the target model is…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Jinbin Zhang , Nasib Ullah , Erik Schultheis , Rohit Babbar

Speculative decoding speeds up autoregressive generation in Large Language Models (LLMs) through a two-step procedure, where a lightweight draft model proposes tokens which the target model then verifies in a single forward pass. Although…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Anton Plaksin , Sergei Krutikov , Sergei Skvortsov , Alexander Samarin

The autoregressive nature of large language models (LLMs) fundamentally limits inference speed, as each forward pass generates only a single token and is often bottlenecked by memory bandwidth. Speculative decoding has emerged as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Zihao An , Huajun Bai , Ziqiong Liu , Dong Li , Emad Barsoum

Autoregressive large language models (LLMs) deliver strong performance but require inherently sequential decoding, leading to high inference latency and poor GPU utilization. Speculative decoding mitigates this bottleneck by using a fast…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Jian Chen , Yesheng Liang , Zhijian Liu

Speculative decoding enhances the inference efficiency of large language models (LLMs) by generating drafts using a small draft language model (DLM) and verifying them in batches with a large target language model (TLM). However, adaptive…

Hardware Architecture · Computer Science 2026-05-01 Ma Zirui , Fan Zhihua , Li Wenxing , Wu Haibin , Zhang Fulin , Ye Xiaochun , Li Wenming

As large language models (LLMs) scale up, accuracy improves, but the autoregressive (AR) nature of decoding increases latency since each token requires a serial forward pass. Speculative decoding addresses this by employing a fast drafter…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-06 Guanghao Li , Zhihui Fu , Min Fang , Qibin Zhao , Ming Tang , Chun Yuan , Jun Wang

Speculative decoding (SD) has emerged as an effective technique to accelerate large language model (LLM) inference without compromising output quality. However, the achievable speedup largely depends on the effectiveness of the drafting…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-04 Min Fang , Zhihui Fu , Qibin Zhao , Jun Wang

We present a novel inference scheme, self-speculative decoding, for accelerating Large Language Models (LLMs) without the need for an auxiliary model. This approach is characterized by a two-stage process: drafting and verification. The…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-11 Jun Zhang , Jue Wang , Huan Li , Lidan Shou , Ke Chen , Gang Chen , Sharad Mehrotra

Speculative decoding (SD) accelerates LLM inference by verifying draft tokens in parallel. However, this method presents a critical trade-off: it improves throughput in low-load, memory-bound systems but degrades performance in high-load,…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Rui Li , Zhaoning Zhang , Libo Zhang , Huaimin Wang , Xiang Fu , Zhiquan Lai

Speculative decoding is a relatively new decoding framework that leverages small and efficient draft models to reduce the latency of LLMs. In this study, we introduce GliDe and CaPE, two low-hassle modifications to vanilla speculative…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-06 Cunxiao Du , Jing Jiang , Xu Yuanchen , Jiawei Wu , Sicheng Yu , Yongqi Li , Shenggui Li , Kai Xu , Liqiang Nie , Zhaopeng Tu , Yang You