Systematic Optimization of Real-Time Diffusion Model Inference on Apple M3 Ultra
Mirrored from arXiv — Machine Learning for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.
Computer Science > Machine Learning
arXiv:2605.16259 (cs)
[Submitted on 10 Feb 2026]
Title:Systematic Optimization of Real-Time Diffusion Model Inference on Apple M3 Ultra
Authors:Yoichi Ochiai
View a PDF of the paper titled Systematic Optimization of Real-Time Diffusion Model Inference on Apple M3 Ultra, by Yoichi Ochiai
View PDF
HTML (experimental)
Abstract:While real-time image generation using diffusion models has advanced rapidly on NVIDIA GPUs, systematic optimization research on non-CUDA platforms such as Apple Silicon remains extremely limited. In this study, we conducted comprehensive optimization experiments across 10 phases targeting the Apple M3 Ultra (60-core GPU, 512 GB unified memory) with the goal of achieving real-time camera img2img transformation. We explored a wide range of techniques including CoreML conversion, quantization, Token Merging, Neural Engine utilization, compact model exploration, frame interpolation, kNN search-based synthesis, pix2pix-turbo, optical flow frame skipping, and knowledge distillation, quantitatively evaluating the effectiveness of each approach. Ultimately, by combining CoreML conversion of the distillation-specialized model SDXS-512 with a 3-thread camera pipeline, we achieved real-time camera img2img transformation at 22.7 FPS at 512x512 resolution. The primary contribution of this work is the systematic demonstration that optimization insights established for CUDA are not necessarily effective on Apple Silicon's unified memory architecture. We reveal an optimization landscape fundamentally different from that of NVIDIA GPUs -- including the absence of speedup from quantization, the ineffectiveness of parallel inference, and the unsuitability of the Neural Engine for large-scale models -- and provide practical guidelines for diffusion model inference on Apple Silicon.
| Subjects: | Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing (cs.DC) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2605.16259 [cs.LG] |
| (or arXiv:2605.16259v1 [cs.LG] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.16259
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
|
Submission history
From: Yoichi Ochiai Prof. [view email][v1] Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:40:45 UTC (17 KB)
Full-text links:
Access Paper:
- View PDF
- HTML (experimental)
- TeX Source
View a PDF of the paper titled Systematic Optimization of Real-Time Diffusion Model Inference on Apple M3 Ultra, by Yoichi Ochiai
Current browse context:
cs.LG
References & Citations
Loading...
Bookmark
Bibliographic Tools
Code, Data, Media
Demos
Related Papers
About arXivLabs
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Recommenders and Search Tools
Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv recommender toggle
IArxiv Recommender
(What is IArxiv?)
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
More from arXiv — Machine Learning
-
Dimensional Balance Improves Large Scale Spatiotemporal Prediction Performance
May 20
-
Robust Basis Spline Decoupling for the Compression of Transformer Models
May 20
-
HELLoRA: Hot Experts Layer-Level Low-Rank Adaptation for Mixture-of-Experts Models
May 20
-
UCCI: Calibrated Uncertainty for Cost-Optimal LLM Cascade Routing
May 20
Discussion (0)
Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.
Sign in →No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.