Same topic, related formats. Practice these next.
A cheap draft proposes K tokens, the target verifies all K in one parallel pass, accepts the matching prefix, resamples the first reject, then repeats. The acceptance rule keeps the target's distribution exact.
Imagine a slow but careful editor and a fast but sloppy assistant. The assistant guesses the next five words quickly. Instead of writing each word himself, the editor reads all five guesses at once in a single glance and checks them in order. He keeps the guesses that match what he would have written, and stops at the first one he disagrees with. There he writes his own word, throws away the rest of the guesses, and lets the assistant guess again from that point. Because the editor only ever keeps words he approves, the final text reads exactly as if he had written every word himself, just much faster when the assistant guesses well.
Everything you need to truly understand this topic: intuition, mechanics, step by step explanation, code, formulas, and worked example. Click to expand.
Everything you need to truly understand this topic: intuition, mechanics, step by step explanation, code, formulas, and worked example.
Everything important, quickly.
4 min: the five-step round in order, why the single target pass follows the proposal, the speculative sampling accept and resample rule, why it preserves the target distribution exactly, and what sets speedup.
Real products, models, and research that use this idea.
What an interviewer would ask next. Try answering before peeking at the approach.
Red flags and common mistakes that signal junior thinking. Click to expand.
Thinking the target runs once per proposed token, or that accepting only the matching prefix changes the output distribution. The verification step is exact, not approximate.
The night-before-the-interview bullets. Scan these on the way to the call.
Primary sources. Skim if you want the original framing.