Simplifying and Improving On-Policy Distillation for Few-Step Diffusion
Few-step distillation reduces the sampling cost of diffusion and flow models, but existing approaches often require auxiliary score models or specialized architectures. We show that simple on-policy velocity regression already provides a strong foundation for 4-NFE generation. To represent teacher velocity variation within each coarse transition, we introduce Pivot, a training-only residual proxy that separates local corrections from the student's interval-mean prediction. We further repel the student from weaker teacher predictions, providing a lightweight mechanism for avoiding undesirable modes. The resulting framework, Simplified Matching Distillation (SMD), remains entirely regressio...
| Authors | Jiawei Zhang, Ziyu Wan, Nanye Ma et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CV |
| Published | 13 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 13 October 2026 |
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 15 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.