Every paper checked — nothing hidden
All papers
Every paper checked in the week of 12–18 Oct 2026 · Small and efficient models — nothing is hidden. Brief papers first.
All2,430In brief3More (on-topic)455Not relevant1,957Not assessed6Older27Could not confirm6Blogs with no paper16All blogs19
| Paper | Topic | Relevance | Feedback |
|---|---|---|---|
| PAIR: Memory-Efficient and Fast Inference with Reading--Reasoning Fusion PAIR splits context processing and answer reasoning between two different-sized models, fusing predictions at the logit level for efficient inference. Ranked #121New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Decouples reading and reasoning across different model sizes to cut KV memory and boost throughput. | |
| Does System One Transfer? Calibrated Typed-Decision Models, Label Budgets, and Translation for Indonesian Regional Languages The paper evaluates the cross-lingual transfer, calibration, and translation sensitivity of fast typed-decision models on regional Indonesian languages. Ranked #122Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Explores cheap, efficient calibrated decision models and confidence-gated routing to cut LLM costs. | |
| ReplaySSM: Cache SSM Inputs, Not State Replaces frequent state memory updates in state-space models by caching inputs and periodically checkpointing state during decoding. Ranked #123New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Accelerates decoding and cuts memory traffic for state-space models during inference serving. | |
| DualQuant: Dual-scale Calibration-free Weight-and-Activation Quantization for LLMs Proposes a calibration-free post-training quantization method that jointly optimizes weight and activation scaling for 4-bit model inference. Ranked #124New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Presents a calibration-free 4-bit weight-and-activation quantization method for efficient LLM serving. | |
| A Privileged Teacher That Only Scores Cannot Search: Critique-Conditioned On-Policy Self-Distillation for Reasoning Examines error localization and credit assignment failures in critique-conditioned on-policy self-distillation for mathematical reasoning. Ranked #125Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Examines on-policy self-distillation techniques to train and improve reasoning models. | |
| Does Learning Recurrent Networks Matter in Partially Observable RL? Investigates whether frozen recurrent networks can provide sufficient memory for partially observable reinforcement learning without end-to-end training. Ranked #126Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Demonstrates frozen recurrent networks halve trainable parameter requirements while retaining performance. | |
| The Gradient That Top-k Distillation Never Computes The paper analyzes gradient dynamics in top-k distillation, showing that renormalization prevents optimization along directions controlling tail token probabilities. Ranked #127Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Examines top-k distillation mechanics for training smaller student models. | |
| The Fragility and Dynamics of LLM Pruning-Recovery Steps The paper analyzes how pruning and subsequent recovery stages interact, finding instruction-following collapses earlier than domain knowledge during model compression. Ranked #128New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Analyzes the dynamics and data composition of structural pruning and recovery. | |
| Kronecker Product Attention: Memory-Efficient KV Compression via Structured Factorization Introduces a key-value cache compression method representing attention activations as sums of compact Kronecker products. Ranked #129New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Proposes Kronecker Product Attention to compress KV cache memory and improve inference efficiency. | |
| When Should Agents Think? Adaptive Reasoning via Cross-Turn Estimation Proposes a training method to adaptively skip turn-by-turn agent reasoning when previous thoughts remain sufficient for future actions. Ranked #130New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Eliminates unnecessary reasoning turns to reduce inference computation in multi-turn agent systems. | |
| zip2zip++: Towards Inference-Time Token Compression with Minimal Quality Loss The paper proposes compression-layer modifications to reduce accuracy loss when using dynamic LZW vocabularies during language model inference. Ranked #131Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Introduces inference-time token compression via dynamic vocabularies to improve serving efficiency. | |
| VFold: Symmetry-Aware Cross-Layer Value Cache Compression Presents a symmetry-aware value cache merging method to compress key-value memory during long-context decoding without architectural changes. Ranked #132New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Proposes value cache merging and compression to reduce memory during LLM inference. | |
| TokenRouter: Efficient Serving System for Token-Level LLM Routing Designs an inference serving system optimized for dynamic, token-level routing across multiple language models. Ranked #133New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Presents an efficient serving and batching system for token-level LLM routing. | |
| DiffuPlex: Accelerating Full-Duplex Spoken Dialog Models via Rolling Masked Diffusion Presents a rolling masked diffusion method that accelerates full-duplex spoken dialog models by forecasting multiple future interaction frames. Ranked #134New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Accelerates full-duplex dialog model inference to achieve wall-clock speedups. | |
| Project Greenhouse: Progress Toward Fully Open and Sovereign Agentic Search The paper describes training a competitive decoder-only search reranker from scratch using modest computational resources and common datasets. Ranked #135New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Demonstrates efficient pre-training and fine-tuning from scratch with modest compute on few GPUs. | |
| Easy to anticipate, hard to compute: boundary dependence finds the computed outputs that entropy patching misses The paper demonstrates that entropy-based byte patching misses predictable calculation points and proposes a boundary-dependence signal to fix it. Ranked #136Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 12 Oct, 16:28 | On-topic Optimizes patch allocation to improve computational efficiency and performance in byte transformers. | |
| Reward-Aligned Distillation This paper presents a bilevel distillation method that weights teacher supervision tokens based on their predicted impact on student reward. Ranked #137New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Introduces a reward-aligned distillation framework to train smaller student models. | |
| Carve VFM: Carving Specialists out of Generalists, Automatic Task-Specific Compression of Vision Foundation Models The paper proposes a structured pruning method to compress vision foundation models into compact task-specific models under parameter budgets. Ranked #138New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Proposes structured pruning and compression methods to make vision foundation models smaller and cheaper to run. | |
| GPU Goldmines: Tunable WebGPU Kernels for Edge LLM Inference The authors present an autotuning framework for WebGPU kernels to improve cross-platform inference speeds for language models on edge devices. Ranked #139Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Optimizes WebGPU kernels for attention and matrix multiplication to accelerate edge and on-device LLM inference. | |
| FunDM: Cheap & Label-Free Decision Models from Frozen Language Models This paper presents a label-free decision head for frozen language models that preserves multiple-choice accuracy with reduced layers and memory. Ranked #140Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Enables cheaper inference and lower memory by attaching small decision heads to fewer transformer layers. | |
| Prorsa: Unleashing the Potential of Prefill-Decode Disaggregation in Agentic Reinforcement Learning The paper explores prefill-decode disaggregation architectures to speed up rollout generation during agentic reinforcement learning training. Ranked #141New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Optimizes serving and rollout efficiency via prefill-decode disaggregation for LLMs. | |
| Resample the Answer: Where to Spend Test-Time Compute in Recursive Reasoning The paper shows that resampling the decoded answer state improves recursive reasoning recovery more efficiently than perturbing latent states. Ranked #142Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Studies efficient test-time compute allocation and resampling strategies for compact recursive reasoning models. | |
| FORGE: Procedural Weight Generation for Sparse MoE Inference The paper introduces FORGE, an on-chip datapath that regenerates sparse mixture-of-experts weights from compact seeds during inference. Ranked #143New way to see a problemPeer-reviewed6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Proposes on-the-fly weight generation to optimize memory and throughput in MoE models. | |
| Efficient Resource-Shiftable RL Post-training with Generative Rewards The paper presents PivotRL, a system that dynamically shifts GPU resources among rollout, reward modeling, and training during post-training. Ranked #144New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Improves GPU resource efficiency during RL post-training for large language models. | |
| Context-Aware Precision Scheduling for Small Language Models The paper proposes a context-aware mixed-precision scheduling method to balance execution latency and accuracy for small language models. Ranked #145New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Presents a context-aware mixed-precision scheduling method to improve efficiency for small language models. | |
| The Price of Precision: A Calibrated Cost Model for Mixed-Precision LLM Serving The paper presents a hardware-calibrated cost model to optimize mixed-precision serving configurations across varying batch sizes and context lengths. Ranked #146New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Introduces a cost model for mixed-precision large language model serving to optimize inference efficiency. | |
| Fast and Accurate: Improving Personalized LLM Performance by Semantic Concentration Inspired Workload Split between RAG and Fine-Tuning This paper splits personalized language model workloads between parameter-efficient fine-tuning and retrieval based on historical data semantic concentration. Ranked #147New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Proposes splitting workloads between PEFT and RAG to lower inference latency. | |
| BARTER: Compact Dynamic Sparse Training with Standard Dense Kernels This paper presents a dynamic sparse training method that reduces compute overhead by maintaining compact tensors with standard dense kernels. Ranked #148New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Introduces dynamic sparse training using standard dense kernels to reduce model compute and cost. | |
| SelectTTRL: Representation-Guided Data Selection for Efficient Test-Time Reinforcement Learning This paper presents a method using internal representation similarity to identify which test problems benefit from test-time reinforcement learning. Ranked #149New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Proposes a data selection method to make test-time reinforcement learning inference and adaptation more efficient. | |
| Swarm Telepathy: Prefill-Free KV-Cache Transfer Across Families Enables prefill-free multi-agent communication across different language model families using cross-model key-value cache transfer. Ranked #150New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Enables prefill-free cross-family KV-cache transfer to speed up multi-model inference. | |
| Representation Drift in Continual Learning: LoRA versus N-gram Memory Measures representation drift across continual learning methods, finding n-gram memory updates cause less internal drift than LoRA. Ranked #151Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Investigates parameter-efficient continual learning comparing N-gram memory against LoRA adapters. | |
| EdgeLLM-Nano: Auditing Polar-Guided Key-Cache Compression and Consistency-Anchored Pruning on a 33.6 MB On-Device Language Model This paper audits key-cache compression and weight pruning techniques on a small edge-deployed language model testbed. Ranked #152Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Audits KV-cache compression and pruning on an ultra-compact on-device model. | |
| ObsSpec: Accelerating Agentic Reinforcement Learning with Observation Speculation This paper introduces an observation speculation framework using small world models to accelerate reinforcement learning rollouts for tool-using agents. Ranked #153New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Uses speculative execution with a small world model to speed up agentic model rollouts. | |
| Beyond Adjacent Layers: Graph-Guided Layer Fusion for Compressing Large Language Models This paper introduces a graph-guided layer fusion method that identifies and merges functionally redundant non-adjacent layers to compress language models. Ranked #154Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Presents a non-adjacent layer fusion method to compress LLMs for efficiency. | |
| Adaptive-Depth Is a Finishing Stage The paper proposes training looped transformers at variable depths only during a short finishing stage to reduce compute costs. Ranked #155Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Reduces training compute and enables adaptive-depth inference compute control in looped transformers. | |
| From Transfer Probes to Expert Grouping: Evidence from LoRA Post-Training The paper examines using transfer probes to group business tasks when sharing Low-Rank Adaptation experts under fixed parameter budgets. Ranked #156Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Evaluates resource-constrained LoRA expert grouping strategies for efficient multi-line model serving. | |
| When More Memory Fails: Hidden Feasibility Holes in Dynamic Tensor Rematerialization The paper investigates dynamic tensor rematerialization, identifying cases where increasing memory budgets causes training to unexpectedly run out of memory. Ranked #157Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Analyzes memory-budget eviction anomalies in Dynamic Tensor Rematerialization for efficient model training. | |
| Demystifying On-Policy Distillation: Where Does the Teacher's Advantage Live? The paper examines teacher interventions along student generation paths to identify how teacher guidance drives performance gains in on-policy distillation. Ranked #158Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 15:06 | On-topic Analyzes on-policy distillation mechanisms to understand how student models effectively absorb teacher knowledge. | |
| Task-Phase-Conditioned Expert Routing Is Not a Reliable Proxy for Quantization Sensitivity in MoE FFN Tensors This paper shows that routing statistics across task phases fail to provide an effective guide for mixed-precision quantization in mixture-of-experts models. Ranked #159Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 17 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Studies mixed-precision quantization strategies for Mixture-of-Experts language models. | |
| Teach Me After You Learn It: Lookahead Self-Distillation for RLVR This paper proposes Lookahead Self-Distillation, providing cross-instance token-level supervision to improve reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards for language models. Ranked #160New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Investigates on-policy self-distillation techniques to train language models more effectively. | |
| Efficiently Learning To Reason or Not to Reason: Root-token Policy Optimization for Adaptive Thinking This paper presents an optimization method that trains models to decide when to invoke reasoning tokens, reducing unnecessary thinking overhead. Ranked #161Surprising resultPeer-reviewed6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Reduces training compute and VRAM overhead by adaptively skipping unnecessary reasoning traces. | |
| DRanker: A Transformer-Based Multi-Task Ranking Model for the Disney+ Homepage The paper presents an encoder-only transformer ranking model deployed at Disney+ that uses lightweight debiasing to improve recommendations. Ranked #162Surprising resultPeer-reviewed6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Details an efficient transformer architecture and lightweight inference stack for production ranking. | |
| Dissecting the Carbon-SLO Tension in Geo-Distributed LLM Serving The paper evaluates carbon-aware scheduling for geographically distributed language model serving under strict latency service-level objectives using an empirical simulator. Ranked #163New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Investigates latency and scheduling optimizations for efficient geo-distributed LLM serving. | |
| ChunkAct: Action Chunking for Agentic Robotics The paper introduces action chunking for agentic robotics to execute pre-planned primitive routines without redundant model reasoning at each step. Ranked #164New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Reduces LLM calls and reasoning costs during multi-step robotic agent execution. | |
| Lightweight but Linguistically Fair? Quantisation Robustness across Bavarian, German, and English The authors evaluate how 8-bit and 4-bit quantization methods affect model accuracy across Bavarian, Standard German, and English benchmarks. Ranked #165Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Evaluates the impact of 8-bit and 4-bit quantization methods across dialects. | |
| LoOPSD: On-Policy Self-Distillation with Looped Teachers This paper introduces a self-distillation method that searches over repeated layer execution orders to create stronger teacher guidance. Ranked #166New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Uses self-distillation across looped layers to improve small model reasoning efficiency. | |
| PaceReasoner: Label-Free Learning to Answer Briefly from Long Reasoning Introduces PaceReasoner, using long reasoning outputs during test-time reinforcement learning to boost the accuracy of brief, low-latency model answers. Ranked #167New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Improves short-form reasoning accuracy while drastically reducing token overhead and inference latency. | |
| RT-J: Large-Scale Pretraining of Relational Transformers for Context-Efficient Predictions Presents RT-J, a relational transformer pretrained on diverse databases to achieve strong in-context table predictions with few sample examples. Ranked #168New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Develops a small 85M relational model that achieves high accuracy with few in-context examples. | |
| LatentRemedy: Efficient Remedy For Non-Prefix KV Cache Reuse in Multi-Agent Systems LatentRemedy uses task-conditioned latent tokens to allow safe key-value cache reuse across conflicting tasks in multi-agent systems. Ranked #169New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Improves inference efficiency by enabling non-prefix KV cache reuse across agents. | |
| BELT : BEhavior-Aligned Low-Rank KV Cache Compression with Learned Top-k Rank Allocation BELT compresses key-value caches using attention-distribution alignment and learned global rank allocation across model heads. Ranked #170New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Introduces low-rank KV cache compression to improve inference throughput and memory efficiency. | |
| Understanding Personalization Gains in Whisper The paper studies low-rank adaptation in Whisper to evaluate whether transcription gains require group-specific adapters rather than pooled fine-tuning. Ranked #171Surprising resultPeer-reviewed6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Analyzes lightweight LoRA parameter-efficient adaptation strategies for Whisper models. | |
| SuPER-Mamba: Surprisal Prioritization for Extended-Context Routing in Mamba Improves long-context handling in Mamba state space models without retraining by using surprisal scores to guide state routing. Ranked #172New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Provides a training-free state routing framework for efficient long-context processing in Mamba. | |
| LLM-based User-Product Relevance Evaluation for Dynamic Product Advertising The paper introduces a large language model-based metric for offline evaluation of user-product relevance in dynamic product advertising retrieval. Ranked #173New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Distills teacher LLM relevance judgments into an efficient student model for deployment. | |
| Growing and Transferring Pathways for LLM Reinforcement Learning Proposes structural growth pathways to preserve pretrained weights during reinforcement learning and enable transfer across language models. Ranked #174New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Enables efficient parameter reuse and transfer across LLMs by freezing backbones and training compact pathways. | |
| REVEAL: Reverse Engineering Agentic Latents from Frontier-Model Traces Extracts reusable local control signals from frontier model traces to guide smaller language model agents without extra target-model training. Ranked #175New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Enables transferring high-capability frontier agent behaviors to smaller, frozen open-source models. | |
| ELECT: Settling Identity Before Rendering for Scalable Story Visualization The paper proposes a training-free method establishing entity identity before final rendering to maintain visual consistency across long storyboards. Ranked #176New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Reduces story generation memory footprint and rendering inference costs. | |
| Recurrent In-Context Learning for Tabular Foundation Models This paper introduces parameter-tied recurrent blocks to reduce model size in tabular foundation models without sacrificing performance. Ranked #177New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:17 | On-topic Shares layer parameters to reduce model size by 62% while enabling flexible inference compute. | |
| AlignPred: Error-Controlled KV Cache Compression via Alignment and Predictive Coding This paper presents an error-controlled compression codec for key-value caches using coordinate alignment and predictive coding. Ranked #178New way to see a problemPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Proposes an error-controlled KV cache compression and predictive coding scheme to optimize serving memory and speed. | |
| How Low Can You Go: Fine-Tuning LLMs with Bayesian Optimization (LlMBO) This paper proposes LlMBO, applying Bayesian optimization to ultra-low-dimensional fine-tuning as an alternative to gradient-based policy optimization. Ranked #179Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Proposes an ultra-low parameter, sample-efficient Bayesian optimization method to fine-tune LLMs with minimal compute. | |
| FastEEP: Fast Intra-Instance Elastic Scaling for Expert-Parallel MoE Serving This paper presents FastEEP, a system that speeds up intra-instance elastic scaling for Mixture-of-Experts serving by reusing runtime state. Ranked #180Surprising resultPreprint6/10 suggested | Small and efficient models via arxiv · 15 Oct, 06:18 | On-topic Introduces elastic intra-instance scaling to make large MoE LLM serving and inference faster and more resource-efficient. |
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