Diffusion-Sharpening: Fine-tuning Diffusion Models with Denoising Trajectory Sharpening

We propose Diffusion-Sharpening, a fine-tuning approach that enhances downstream alignment by optimizing sampling trajectories. Existing RL-based fine-tuning methods focus on single training timesteps and neglect trajectory-level alignment, while recent sampling trajectory optimization methods incur significant inference NFE costs. Diffusion-Sharpening overcomes this by using a path integral framework to select optimal trajectories during training, leveraging reward feedback, and amortizing inference costs. Our method demonstrates superior training efficiency with faster convergence, and best inference efficiency without requiring additional NFEs. Extensive experiments show that Diffusion-Sharpening outperforms RL-based fine-tuning methods (e.g., Diffusion-DPO) and sampling trajectory optimization methods (e.g., Inference Scaling) across diverse metrics including text alignment, compositional capabilities, and human preferences, offering a scalable and efficient solution for future diffusion model fine-tuning. Code: https://github.com/Gen-Verse/Diffusion-Sharpening

HermesFlow: Seamlessly Closing the Gap in Multimodal Understanding and Generation

The remarkable success of the autoregressive paradigm has made significant advancement in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), with powerful models like Show-o, Transfusion and Emu3 achieving notable progress in unified image understanding and generation. For the first time, we uncover a common phenomenon: the understanding capabilities of MLLMs are typically stronger than their generative capabilities, with a significant gap between the two. Building on this insight, we propose HermesFlow, a simple yet general framework designed to seamlessly bridge the gap between understanding and generation in MLLMs. Specifically, we take the homologous data as input to curate homologous preference data of both understanding and generation. Through Pair-DPO and self-play iterative optimization, HermesFlow effectively aligns multimodal understanding and generation using homologous preference data. Extensive experiments demonstrate the significant superiority of our approach over prior methods, particularly in narrowing the gap between multimodal understanding and generation. These findings highlight the potential of HermesFlow as a general alignment framework for next-generation multimodal foundation models. Code: https://github.com/Gen-Verse/HermesFlow

ReasonFlux: Hierarchical LLM Reasoning via Scaling Thought Templates

We present that hierarchical LLM reasoning via scaling thought templates can effectively optimize the reasoning search space and outperform the mathematical reasoning capabilities of powerful LLMs like OpenAI o1-preview and DeepSeek V3. We train our ReasonFlux-32B model with only 8 GPUs and introduces three innovations: (i) a structured and generic thought template library, containing around 500 high-level thought templates capable of generalizing to similar or relevant reasoning problems; (ii) performing hierarchical reinforcement learning on a sequence of thought templates instead of long CoTs, optimizing a base LLM to plan out an optimal template trajectory for gradually handling complex problems; (iii) a brand new inference scaling system that enables hierarchical LLM reasoning by adaptively scaling thought templates at inference time. With a template trajectory containing sequential thought templates, our ReasonFlux-32B significantly advances math reasoning capabilities to state-of-the-art levels. Notably, on the MATH benchmark, it achieves an accuracy of 91.2% and surpasses o1-preview by 6.7%. On the USA Math Olympiad (AIME) benchmark, ReasonFlux-32B solves an average of 56.7% of problems, surpassing o1-preview and DeepSeek-V3 by 27% and 45%, respectively. Code: https://github.com/Gen-Verse/ReasonFlux

Improving Low-Resource Sequence Labeling with Knowledge Fusion and Contextual Label Explanations

Sequence labeling remains a significant challenge in low-resource, domain-specific scenarios, particularly for character-dense languages like Chinese. Existing methods primarily focus on enhancing model comprehension and improving data diversity to boost performance. However, these approaches still struggle with inadequate model applicability and semantic distribution biases in domain-specific contexts. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel framework that combines an LLM-based knowledge enhancement workflow with a span-based Knowledge Fusion for Rich and Efficient Extraction (KnowFREE) model. Our workflow employs explanation prompts to generate precise contextual interpretations of target entities, effectively mitigating semantic biases and enriching the model's contextual understanding. The KnowFREE model further integrates extension label features, enabling efficient nested entity extraction without relying on external knowledge during inference. Experiments on multiple Chinese domain-specific sequence labeling datasets demonstrate that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance, effectively addressing the challenges posed by low-resource settings.

Med-R$^2$: Crafting Trustworthy LLM Physicians through Retrieval and Reasoning of Evidence-Based Medicine

In recent years, Large Language Models (LLMs) have exhibited remarkable capabilities in clinical scenarios. However, despite their potential, existing works face challenges when applying LLMs to medical settings. Strategies relying on training with medical datasets are highly cost-intensive and may suffer from outdated training data. Leveraging external knowledge bases is a suitable alternative, yet it faces obstacles such as limited retrieval precision and poor effectiveness in answer extraction. These issues collectively prevent LLMs from demonstrating the expected level of proficiency in mastering medical expertise. To address these challenges, we introduce Med-R^2, a novel LLM physician framework that adheres to the Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) process, efficiently integrating retrieval mechanisms as well as the selection and reasoning processes of evidence, thereby enhancing the problem-solving capabilities of LLMs in healthcare scenarios and fostering a trustworthy LLM physician. Our comprehensive experiments indicate that Med-R^2 achieves a 14.87\% improvement over vanilla RAG methods and even a 3.59\% enhancement compared to fine-tuning strategies, without incurring additional training costs.

Training-free Heterogeneous Graph Condensation via Data Selection

Efficient training of large-scale heterogeneous graphs is of paramount importance in real-world applications. However, existing approaches typically explore simplified models to mitigate resource and time overhead, neglecting the crucial aspect of simplifying large-scale heterogeneous graphs from the data-centric perspective. Addressing this gap, HGCond introduces graph condensation (GC) in heterogeneous graphs and generates a small condensed graph for efficient model training. Despite its efficacy in graph generation, HGCond encounters two significant limitations. The first is low effectiveness, HGCond excessively relies on the simplest relay model for the condensation procedure, which restricts the ability to exert powerful Heterogeneous Graph Neural Networks (HGNNs) with flexible condensation ratio and limits the generalization ability. The second is low efficiency, HGCond follows the existing GC methods designed for homogeneous graphs and leverages the sophisticated optimization paradigm, resulting in a time-consuming condensing procedure. In light of these challenges, we present the first Training \underline{Free} Heterogeneous Graph Condensation method, termed FreeHGC, facilitating both efficient and high-quality generation of heterogeneous condensed graphs. Specifically, we reformulate the heterogeneous graph condensation problem as a data selection issue, offering a new perspective for assessing and condensing representative nodes and edges in the heterogeneous graphs. By leveraging rich meta-paths, we introduce a new, high-quality heterogeneous data selection criterion to select target-type nodes. Furthermore, two training-free condensation strategies for heterogeneous graphs are designed to condense and synthesize other-types nodes effectively.

Demystifying Workload Imbalances in Large Transformer Model Training over Variable-length Sequences

To optimize large Transformer model training, efficient parallel computing and advanced data management are essential. However, current methods often assume a stable and uniform training workload, neglecting imbalances in data sampling and packing that can impede performance. Specifically, data sampling imbalance arises from uneven sequence length distribution of the training data, while data packing imbalance stems from the discrepancy between the linear memory complexity and quadratic time complexity of the attention mechanism. To address these imbalance issues, we develop Hydraulis, which jointly optimizes the parallel strategies and data assignment. For one thing, we introduce large model training with dynamic heterogeneous parallel strategies in response to the sequence length variations within and across training iterations. For another, we devise a two-stage data assignment approach, which strikes a good balance in terms of the training workloads both within and across model replicas. Empirical results demonstrate that Hydraulis outperforms existing systems by 1.32-2.66 times.

DataLab: A Unified Platform for LLM-Powered Business Intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) transforms large volumes of data within modern organizations into actionable insights for informed decision-making. Recently, large language model (LLM)-based agents have streamlined the BI workflow by automatically performing task planning, reasoning, and actions in executable environments based on natural language (NL) queries. However, existing approaches primarily focus on individual BI tasks such as NL2SQL and NL2VIS. The fragmentation of tasks across different data roles and tools lead to inefficiencies and potential errors due to the iterative and collaborative nature of BI. In this paper, we introduce DataLab, a unified BI platform that integrates a one-stop LLM-based agent framework with an augmented computational notebook interface. DataLab supports a wide range of BI tasks for different data roles by seamlessly combining LLM assistance with user customization within a single environment. To achieve this unification, we design a domain knowledge incorporation module tailored for enterprise-specific BI tasks, an inter-agent communication mechanism to facilitate information sharing across the BI workflow, and a cell-based context management strategy to enhance context utilization efficiency in BI notebooks. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DataLab achieves state-of-the-art performance on various BI tasks across popular research benchmarks. Moreover, DataLab maintains high effectiveness and efficiency on real-world datasets from Tencent, achieving up to a 58.58% increase in accuracy and a 61.65% reduction in token cost on enterprise-specific BI tasks.

DataLab: A Unifed Platform for LLM-Powered Business Intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) transforms large volumes of data within modern organizations into actionable insights for informed decision-making. Recently, large language model (LLM)-based agents have streamlined the BI workflow by automatically performing task planning, reasoning, and actions in executable environments based on natural language (NL) queries. However, existing approaches primarily focus on individual BI tasks such as NL2SQL and NL2VIS. The fragmentation of tasks across different data roles and tools lead to inefficiencies and potential errors due to the iterative and collaborative nature of BI. In this paper, we introduce DataLab, a unified BI platform that integrates a one-stop LLM-based agent framework with an augmented computational notebook interface. DataLab supports a wide range of BI tasks for different data roles by seamlessly combining LLM assistance with user customization within a single environment. To achieve this unification, we design a domain knowledge incorporation module tailored for enterprise-specific BI tasks, an inter-agent communication mechanism to facilitate information sharing across the BI workflow, and a cell-based context management strategy to enhance context utilization efficiency in BI notebooks. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DataLab achieves state-of-the-art performance on various BI tasks across popular research benchmarks. Moreover, DataLab maintains high effectiveness and efficiency on real-world datasets from Tencent, achieving up to a 58.58% increase in accuracy and a 61.65% reduction in token cost on enterprise-specific BI tasks.

Data-Centric and Heterogeneity-Adaptive Sequence Parallelism for Efficient LLM Training

Extending the context length (i.e., the maximum supported sequence length) of LLMs is of paramount significance. To facilitate long context training of LLMs, sequence parallelism has emerged as an essential technique, which scatters each input sequence across multiple devices and necessitates communication to process the sequence. In essence, existing sequence parallelism methods assume homogeneous sequence lengths (i.e., all input sequences are equal in length) and therefore leverages a single, static scattering strategy for all input sequences. However, in reality, the sequence lengths in LLM training corpora exhibit substantial variability, often following a long-tail distribution, which leads to workload heterogeneity. In this paper, we show that employing a single, static strategy results in inefficiency and resource under-utilization, highlighting the need for adaptive approaches to handle the heterogeneous workloads across sequences. To address this, we propose a heterogeneity-adaptive sequence parallelism method. For each training step, our approach captures the variability in sequence lengths and assigns the optimal combination of scattering strategies based on workload characteristics. We model this problem as a linear programming optimization and design an efficient and effective solver to find the optimal solution. Furthermore, we implement our method in a high-performance system that supports adaptive parallelization in distributed LLM training. Experimental results demonstrate that our system outperforms state-of-the-art training frameworks by up to 1.98x.