Beyond U: Making Diffusion Models Faster & Lighter
Authors: name: Sergio Calvo-Ordonez, name: Jiahao Huang, name: Lipei Zhang, name: Guang Yang, name: Carola-Bibiane Schonlieb, name: Angelica I Aviles-Rivero

Diffusion models are a family of generative models that yield record-breaking
performance in tasks such as image synthesis, video generation, and molecule
design. Despite their capabilities, their efficiency, especially in the reverse
denoising process, remains a challenge due to slow convergence rates and high
computational costs. In this work, we introduce an approach that leverages
continuous dynamical systems to design a novel denoising network for diffusion
models that is more parameter-efficient, exhibits faster convergence, and
demonstrates increased noise robustness. Experimenting with denoising
probabilistic diffusion models, our framework operates with approximately a
quarter of the parameters and 30% of the Floating Point Operations (FLOPs)
compared to standard U-Nets in Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models
(DDPMs). Furthermore, our model is up to 70% faster in inference than the
baseline models when measured in equal conditions while converging to better
quality solutions.