Research Radarcs.LGJul 13, 2026classified

From Global to Factor-Wise Expert Composition in Discrete Diffusion Models

Haozhe Huang, Yudong Xu, Abhijoy Mandal, Alán Aspuru-GuzikarXivPDF
cs.LG

Paper Guide Brief

Reading Brief

Proposes FactorDiff, a factor-wise composition framework for discrete diffusion models that routes each spatial factor (pixel) to the most competent expert via confidence-based selection, outperforming global scalar weighting on ARC-AGI.

Central Claim

FactorDiff introduces per-pixel expert routing for discrete diffusion models, enabling spatially heterogeneous composition that captures complementary expert specializations, validated on ARC-AGI.

Contribution

FactorDiff introduces per-pixel expert routing for discrete diffusion models, enabling spatially heterogeneous composition that captures complementary expert specializations, validated on ARC-AGI.

Why It Matters

By decomposing composition into per-factor routing rather than per-sample scalar weighting, FactorDiff allows experts to contribute only where they are locally reliable, achieving large gains when composing specialists (e.g., 90.5% exact a...

Prerequisites

factor-wise composition, per-pixel routing, confidence-based selection, masked diffusion, 2D grid diffusion

Atlas Placement

Deep Learning (subfield)

Read If

You care about factor-wise composition, per-pixel routing, confidence-based selection.

Skip If

You only care about ARC-AGI-1, ARC-AGI.

Methods
factor-wise compositionper-pixel routingconfidence-based selectionmasked diffusion2D grid diffusion
Tasks
compositional generationspatial reasoninggrid-based reasoning
Datasets
ARC-AGIRE-ARC
Benchmarks
ARC-AGI-1

Noosaga Placements

  • Deep Learningsubfield95%
    The paper proposes a new method for composing discrete diffusion models, a core deep learning technique, and evaluates it on a reasoning benchmark.
    Discrete diffusion models offer a powerful framework for solving complex reasoning tasksWe propose FactorDiff – a factor-wise composition framework for diffusion models
  • Diffusion Modelsframework95%
    The paper extends discrete diffusion models by introducing a factor-wise composition mechanism (FactorDiff) that goes beyond existing per-sample scalar weighting methods.
    We propose FactorDiff – a factor-wise composition framework for diffusion modelsWe instantiate this framework with spatial/pixel-level compositions
  • Machine Learningsubfield70%
    The work involves combining multiple pre-trained models (experts) at inference time, a machine learning composition problem, but the core novelty is in the diffusion sampling process.
    compositional generation, which combines multiple pre-trained experts to generalize beyond their individual training data

Abstract

Discrete diffusion models offer a powerful framework for solving complex reasoning tasks, particularly through compositional generation, which combines multiple pre-trained experts to generalize beyond their individual training data. Recent theoretical corrections introduce time-dependent mixing weights to better align composed diffusion dynamics with the intended target. However, these methods are fundamentally limited by working on a per-sample basis, treating each generated state monolithically and ignoring the potential spatial or functional specializations of different experts. In this work, we address this limitation by proposing FactorDiff - a factor-wise composition framework for diffusion models. We posit that samples can be further decomposed into smaller factors, and propose a sampling process that dynamically routes each factor to the most relevant expert. We instantiate this framework with spatial/pixel-level compositions and validate it on the ARC-AGI benchmark, demonstrating that simple factor-specific routing consistently outperforms complex global scalar weighting schemes on tasks that require logical consistency and spatial disentanglement.

Paper Context

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Coverage56,523 chars

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From Global to Factor-Wise Expert Composition in Discrete Diffusion Models | Research Radar