arXiv:2606.20599cs.AIcs.LG2026-06

对比两种思维树方法在不同算力下的表现,发现固定策略难适应资源变化。

Beyond Fixed Budgets: Characterizing the Inelasticity and Limitations of Tree-of-Thought Reasoning Strategies

  • 测试两种思维树搜索策略在不同算力与模型规模下的表现
  • 低预算时探索不足导致性能差,高预算时剪枝过激反而丢失路径
  • 提出需动态调整策略以适应计算资源和搜索进度

思维树(ToT)搜索已成为提升大语言模型推理能力的有前景方向,但其实际部署中一个长期被忽视的问题是:不同搜索策略在不同计算预算、模型规模和问题难度下的表现如何?本文评估了两种代表性ToT方法:基于蒙特卡洛树搜索的DPTS和基于语义去重的SSDP,覆盖两个数学推理基准(Math500和GSM8K)、两种模型规模(Llama-3B和Llama-8B)以及四个令牌预算(3k–10k)。分析显示,两种方法存在相反的局限性:DPTS在低预算下受冷启动瓶颈影响,需充分探索后价值估计才可靠,资源受限场景表现不佳;而SSDP虽能快速生成候选解,但因激进节点合并永久丢弃未探索路径,即使剩余预算充足也无法改进。结果表明,单一固定探索或剪枝策略无法适配整个计算连续体。我们主张,科学推理智能体的有效搜索需根据搜索进展和可用资源动态调整策略。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Tree of Thought (ToT) search has become a promising direction for improving the reasoning capabilities of large language models, but deploying these methods in practice raises a question that has received little systematic attention: how do different search strategies behave under varying compute budgets, model sizes, and problem difficulties? In this work, we evaluate two representative ToT methods; DPTS, a Monte Carlo tree search based approach, and SSDP, a semantic deduplication based approach, across two mathematical reasoning benchmarks (Math500 and GSM8K), two model scales (Llama-3B and Llama-8B), and four token budgets (3k--10k). Our analysis reveals that the two methods exhibit limitations that pull in opposite directions. DPTS suffers from a cold-start bottleneck at low budgets: it requires sufficient exploration before its value estimates become reliable, making it a poor fit for resource-constrained settings despite strong scaling behavior at higher budgets. SSDP, on the other hand, reaches candidate solutions efficiently but is prone to frontier depletion; its aggressive node merging permanently discards unexplored paths, leaving it unable to improve regardless of how much budget remains. Together, these findings suggest that neither a fixed exploration strategy nor a fixed pruning strategy is sufficient across compute continuum. We argue that effective search for scientific reasoning agents requires strategies that can adapt their behavior based on search progress and available resources.

思维树推理优化计算预算动态策略

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。