Shuting Liu | Search arXiv

arXiv2026

Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design of a Lightweight PCG Equalizer with a Fixed Step Size for Massive MIMO

Coarse quantization in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems reduces power but causes clipping distortions. The Bayesian Expectation-Maximization (BEM) algorithm can recover clipped signals, but its matrix inversion and dynamic step-size evaluation are hardware bottlenecks. We propose a hardware-friendly one-step correction that uses the initial Jacobi-preconditioned Conjugate Gradient (PCG) direction with a fixed relaxation parameter. The resulting symbol-level update has an ultra-lightweight $\mathcal{O}(U)$ feed-forward datapath and approaches high-resolution reference detectors in the evaluated massive-MIMO setting. Our finite-dimensional analysis establishes the exact one-step descent law, proves that Jacobi normalization cancels the raw multiplicative near-far scaling while confining the loaded-system dependence to bounded attenuation factors, and gives verifiable sufficient conditions for fixed-step descent in terms of normalized channel coherence. System-level results indicate projected power savings for energy-efficient massive MIMO uplinks.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Is Multimodal Speculative Decoding Ready for Diffusion-Based Parallel Drafting? A Survey and Empirical Diagnosis

Speculative decoding accelerates autoregressive generation by allowing a lightweight drafter to propose future tokens while a target model verifies them in parallel. Its lossless guarantee has motivated a line of work that pushes the drafter itself toward parallel generation. The most recent paradigm is block-parallel generative drafting, including diffusion-based methods such as DFlash and DSpark, achieving up to 3.6x speedup on common daily chatting tasks. While this transition is well studied in text-only LLMs, its applicability to multimodal models remains an open question. Existing multimodal speculative decoding efforts focus on input compression, adapter alignment, candidate coverage, or modality-specific verification; however, block-parallel generative drafting remains largely unexplored. To bridge this gap, this paper combines a modality-centered survey with a cross-architecture empirical study to ask: Is multimodal speculative decoding ready for diffusion-based parallel drafting? In this survey, we systematically analyze a wide spectrum of multimodal models, spanning Vision-Language, Video-Language, Audio, and Vision-Language-Action (VLA) architectures, from the dual perspectives of drafting parallelism and cross-modal information interaction. We introduce a unified taxonomy that isolates drafter-side parallelism from orthogonal design choices such as tree construction and verification strategies. Furthermore, we provide a comprehensive empirical comparison of existing methods under varying degrees of parallelism across standardized multimodal benchmarks, including OCR, VQA, visual reasoning, and image captioning. Finally, we summarize the limitations of current approaches, discuss open challenges, and outline promising future directions for this rapidly evolving field.

cs.AI↗