Google's Gemini Diffusion: LLM Speed Breakthrough

Gemini Diffusion, Google's diffusion-based LLM, achieves impressive text generation speed, rivaling Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite and Cerebras Coder while potentially using a transformer architecture.

Gemini Diffusion: Google's New Fast LLM

• What it is: Gemini Diffusion is Google's first LLM using diffusion, similar to image models, instead of traditional transformers for text generation.

• How it works:

  • Traditional models generate text one token at a time (slow).
  • Diffusion models refine noise step-by-step (very fast, can error correct).

• Key Feature: Speed! Generates code at impressive speed. Example: Built a simulated chat app at 857 tokens/second.

• Performance: Comparable to Cerebras Coder (Llama3.1-70b on Cerebras).

• Model Quality: Google claims performance similar to Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite at 5x the speed.

• Prior Diffusion LLMs: Inception Mercury (February)

• Important Correction: Diffusion replaces autoregression, not necessarily transformers. It likely still uses a transformer architecture