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[ARTICLE · art-100833] src=arxiv.org ↗ pub= topic=large-language-models verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Beyond Tokens: A Survey on Decoding Methods for Large Language and Vision-Language Models

A new survey from arXiv (2608.14797v1) identifies three emerging paradigms in decoding methods for large language models (LLMs) and large vision-language models (LVLMs), offering a systematic review of inference-time techniques that guide token selection, sequence-level generation, or parallel token generation to improve alignment with user intent. The authors highlight ongoing challenges and future research directions, with resources available at https://github.com/wang2226/Awesome-LLM-Decoding.

read1 min views35 publishedAug 18, 2026

arXiv:2608.14797v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) and large vision-language models (LVLMs) have demonstrated impressive generative capabilities, yet ensuring their outputs align with user intent is still challenging. While most existing approaches address this issue at the training stage, inference-time approaches like decoding methods offer a more efficient and scalable solution. Decoding methods control model generation by guiding token-level selection, performing sequence-level generation, or generating tokens in parallel to accelerate the process. In this survey, we identify three emerging paradigms from recent works on decoding methods for LLMs and LVLMs, provide a systematic review of these methods, highlight ongoing challenges, and discuss potential future research directions. Our goal is to underscore the efficiency and effectiveness of decoding methods and offer a practical view of their applications. Paper lists and more resources on decoding methods for LLMs and LVLMs can be found at https://github.com/wang2226/Awesome-LLM-Decoding.

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