用二进制流扩散建模文本,生成质量接近自回归模型。
CoBit: Language Modeling with Bitstream Diffusion

- 将文本转为固定宽度二进制流,用连续扩散过程建模语义。
- 在LM1B上达59.76的生成困惑度,接近自回归基准;在OWT上仅用1/4步数超越前人。
- 突破词汇量瓶颈,可高效扩展至超大词表,适合大规模语言生成场景。
扩散语言模型(DLMs)虽具备并行生成优势,但长期在样本质量与多样性上落后于自回归模型。本文提出CoBit(连续比特流扩散),将文本视为固定宽度二进制比特流上的连续扩散过程。通过匹配滤波残差参数化分离上下文学习与独立比特后验,并引入基于熵率轮廓的随机采样器,在高信息区域集中随机性,其余区域近乎确定。在LM1B上,130M参数模型以256次神经函数评估(NFE)实现59.76的生成困惑度(GenPPL),对应真实数据熵4.31,优于以往DLM基线并达到自回归参考水平。在OpenWebText(OWT)上,其采样器以4倍更少步骤达成27.06的GenPPL(熵5.26),刷新连续DLM帕累托前沿。扩展至462M参数模型(CoBit-M)后,于OWT实现19.5的GenPPL(熵5.40),逼近真实熵5.44,接近GPT-2 Medium表现。此外,比特流扩散避免了传统DLM的O(V)词汇量瓶颈,通过预测O(log V)比特位概率提升吞吐与降低内存,具备良好可扩展性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Diffusion language models (DLMs) promise parallel, order-agnostic generation, but on standard benchmarks they have historically lagged behind autoregressive models in sample quality and diversity. Recent continuous flow and diffusion approaches have narrowed this gap. In this work, we further close the autoregressive gap by modeling text as a continuous diffusion process over fixed-width binary bitstreams. We refer to the resulting model as CoBit (Continuous Bitstream Diffusion). Our approach represents semantic tokens as analog bit sequences and uses a matched-filter residual parameterization to isolate contextual learning from analytic independent-bit posteriors. Crucially, we adopt a stochastic sampler that applies Langevin-type corrections gated by the entropy-rate profile, concentrating stochasticity in high-information regions while remaining nearly deterministic elsewhere. On LM1B, our 130M-parameter model reaches a generative perplexity (GenPPL) of 59.76 at matched real-data entropy (4.31) using 256 neural function evaluations (NFEs), outperforming prior DLM baselines and reaching the autoregressive reference. On OpenWebText (OWT), our sampler establishes a new continuous-DLM Pareto frontier, achieving GenPPL 27.06 at entropy 5.26 using 4x fewer steps than previous 1024-NFE baselines. Scaling the same recipe to a 462M-parameter model (CoBit-M) further improves the OWT GenPPL-entropy frontier over the 130M model (CoBit-S) and over medium-scale continuous and discrete DLM baselines, reaching GenPPL 19.5 at entropy 5.40, near real-data entropy (5.44), and approaching pretrained GPT-2 Medium over the high-quality region. As an additional benefit, bitstream diffusion removes the O(V) vocabulary scaling bottleneck of standard DLMs: by predicting O(log V) bitwise logits via semantic bit-patching, it lowers memory and raises throughput, a scalable paradigm as vocabulary sizes grow.
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