是什么扼杀了 v-prediction?像素空间流匹配的逐块 PCA 视角
What kills $v$-prediction? A Patch-wise PCA Perspective on Pixel-Space Flow Matching
Tianze Luo, Haofeng Huang, Yuan Yao
AI 速读 基于摘要
作者从逐块 PCA 的带宽瓶颈视角解释像素空间流匹配中 v-prediction 的训练困难,并提出 Raw-injected Transformer(RiT)以恢复有效的 v-prediction。
cs.CV · cs.LG
查看原文摘要
Latent Diffusion Models dominate generative modeling but face two-stage training complexity and the inherent reconstruction limits of pre-trained autoencoders. Pixel-space Flow Matching offers a simplified end-to-end alternative yet often encounters training difficulties when using the standard $v$-prediction objective. Recent research attributes this difficulty to the off-manifold nature of noised targets, motivating a shift toward $x$-prediction. In this paper, we investigate this explanation through patch-wise Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and identify a bandwidth bottleneck. The velocity in minor components is largely determined by the raw noisy input, requiring deep backbones to preserve information that competes with principal-component modeling. Through controlled experiments and representation analysis, we further examine why $x$-prediction remains effective: its parameterization provides a raw-input bypass, while its learned input representation can spontaneously concentrate on principal directions. Under low-rank observations, our analysis of the induced flow characterizes $x$-prediction as an implicit conditional-mean decoder, reconstructing discarded components from the retained information. These observations motivate the Raw-injected Transformer (RiT), which combines a lightweight raw-conditioned decoder with an output-side shortcut to separate semantic modeling from raw-state propagation. Our method restores effective $v$-prediction and achieves competitive performance on ImageNet $256\times256$, providing a perspective on the interaction between prediction objectives and architectural bandwidth.