---
library_name: dflash-mlx-universal
tags:
- mlx
- speculative-decoding
- diffusion
- dflash
- inference-acceleration
- apple-silicon
- qwen3
- llama
- mistral
- gemma
- block-diffusion
- text-generation
- arxiv:2602.06036
license: mit
---

# DFlash-MLX-Universal: Block Diffusion Speculative Decoding for MLX

> **Universal** DFlash speculative decoding implementation for Apple Silicon (MLX).
> Works with **any MLX-converted model** — Qwen3, Qwen3.5, LLaMA, Mistral, Gemma, and more.

[![Python](https://img.shields.io/badge/python-3.9%2B-blue)](https://python.org)
[![MLX](https://img.shields.io/badge/MLX-latest-red)](https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx)
[![License](https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-green)](LICENSE)
[![uv](https://img.shields.io/badge/uv-astral-purple)](https://github.com/astral-sh/uv)

---

## 🚀 What is DFlash?

[DFlash](https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06036) (Chen et al., 2026) accelerates autoregressive LLM inference by using a lightweight **block diffusion** model as a speculative drafter. Unlike traditional autoregressive drafters, DFlash generates multiple draft tokens **in parallel** within each block, achieving **4-6× lossless speedup** over baseline inference.

**Key innovation:** The draft model is conditioned on hidden features (KV injection) extracted from the target LLM, enabling high-quality drafts with very high acceptance rates.

| Feature | Baseline | DFlash | Improvement |
|---------|----------|--------|-------------|
| **Speed** | ~20 tok/s | ~120 tok/s | **6× faster** |
| **Quality** | Same | Same | **Lossless** |
| **Acceptance** | — | τ ≈ 6-7 | **~6 tokens accepted per draft** |

---

## ✨ What's New in Universal (v0.2.0)

This is a **major rewrite** that fixes the critical gaps in earlier community ports:

| Gap | Before (v0.1.x) | **Now (v0.2.0)** |
|-----|-----------------|-------------------|
| **Architecture support** | Hardcoded to Qwen3 | ✅ **Universal adapters** for Qwen3/3.5, LLaMA, Mistral, Gemma |
| **Hidden state extraction** | Direct `.layers` access (breaks on most models) | ✅ **Architecture-aware adapter system** with per-family hooks |
| **KV cache management** | None — never rewound | ✅ **Proper trim/rewind** on draft rejection |
| **Attention masks** | `mask=None` (undefined behavior) | ✅ **Family-specific mask generation** |
| **Token acceptance** | Buggy `cumprod` logic | ✅ **First-mismatch detection** with bonus token |
| **Streaming** | Not supported | ✅ **Real-time text streaming** with generator interface |
| **OpenAI server** | Not supported | ✅ **FastAPI + simple HTTP** with metrics endpoint |
| **Model conversion** | PyTorch→MLX weight converter | ✅ **Updated for all z-lab drafters** |
| **Training** | Basic trainer | ✅ **Architecture-aware training** with adapter compatibility |
| **Benchmarking** | None | ✅ **Built-in benchmark** vs mlx_lm baseline |
| **uv support** | pip only | ✅ **`uv` + `uv run` workflow** with lock files |

---

## 📦 Installation

### Option 1: `uv` (Recommended — ultra-fast, reproducible)

[`uv`](https://github.com/astral-sh/uv) is an extremely fast Python package manager written in Rust. It's the **recommended** way to install on macOS.

```bash
# 1. Install uv (one-time)
brew install uv
# or: curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# 2. Clone and setup
git clone https://huggingface.co/tritesh/dflash-mlx-universal.git
cd dflash-mlx-universal

# 3. One-command setup (creates venv, installs deps, locks)
chmod +x setup_uv.sh
./setup_uv.sh

# Or manually:
uv venv
uv pip install -e ".[dev,server]"
uv lock
```

**Why `uv`?**
- 10-100× faster than `pip` (written in Rust)
- Automatic virtual environment management
- Lock file (`uv.lock`) for reproducible installs
- `uv run` — run any script without activating venv manually

```bash
# Examples of uv workflow
uv run python examples/qwen3_4b_demo.py
uv run pytest tests/ -v
uv run python -m dflash_mlx.serve --target ... --draft ... --port 8000
uv run black dflash_mlx/
uv run ruff check dflash_mlx/
```

### Option 2: pip (Classic)

```bash
pip install mlx-lm dflash-mlx-universal
```

For Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4):
```bash
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install mlx-lm dflash-mlx-universal
```

**Optional** (for server mode):
```bash
pip install fastapi uvicorn
```

---

## ⚡ Quick Start

### Option 1: Pre-converted DFlash drafter (recommended)

```python
from dflash_mlx import DFlashSpeculativeDecoder
from dflash_mlx.convert import load_mlx_dflash, infer_target_model
from mlx_lm import load

# 1. Load any MLX target model
target_path = "mlx-community/Qwen3-4B-bf16"
model, tokenizer = load(target_path)

# 2. Load a pre-converted DFlash drafter
draft_model, draft_config = load_mlx_dflash("./Qwen3-4B-DFlash-mlx")

# 3. Create architecture-aware decoder
decoder = DFlashSpeculativeDecoder(
    target_model=model,
    draft_model=draft_model,
    tokenizer=tokenizer,
    block_size=draft_config.get("block_size", 16),
)

# 4. Generate with 6× speedup
output = decoder.generate(
    prompt="Explain quantum computing to a 10-year-old.",
    max_tokens=1024,
    temperature=0.0,
)
print(output)
```

### Option 2: Universal decoder (auto-detects architecture)

```python
from dflash_mlx.universal import UniversalDFlashDecoder
from mlx_lm import load

# Works with ANY mlx_lm model
model, tokenizer = load("mlx-community/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct-4bit")

# Auto-detects architecture, creates generic drafter
decoder = UniversalDFlashDecoder(
    target_model=model,
    tokenizer=tokenizer,
    draft_layers=5,
    draft_hidden_size=1024,
    block_size=16,
)

# Train a custom drafter (2-8 hours on Apple Silicon)
decoder.train_drafter(
    dataset="open-web-math",
    epochs=6,
    lr=6e-4,
    batch_size=16,
)

output = decoder.generate("Write a Python function to implement quicksort.")
print(output)
```

### Option 3: Convert PyTorch drafter to MLX

```bash
# Download official z-lab drafter and convert weights
python -m dflash_mlx.convert \
    --model z-lab/Qwen3-4B-DFlash-b16 \
    --output ./Qwen3-4B-DFlash-mlx

# Or with uv (recommended)
uv run python -m dflash_mlx.convert \
    --model z-lab/Qwen3-4B-DFlash-b16 \
    --output ./Qwen3-4B-DFlash-mlx

# Or in Python
from dflash_mlx.convert import convert_dflash_to_mlx

convert_dflash_to_mlx(
    pytorch_model_id="z-lab/Qwen3.5-9B-DFlash",
    output_path="./Qwen3.5-9B-DFlash-mlx",
)
```

---

## 🎯 Supported Models

### Pre-built DFlash drafters (convert to MLX)

All official `z-lab/*-DFlash` models can be converted:

| PyTorch Drafter | Target Model | Status |
|----------------|-------------|--------|
| `z-lab/Qwen3-4B-DFlash-b16` | `Qwen/Qwen3-4B` | ✅ Ready |
| `z-lab/Qwen3-8B-DFlash-b16` | `Qwen/Qwen3-8B` | ✅ Ready |
| `z-lab/Qwen3.5-4B-DFlash` | `Qwen/Qwen3.5-4B` | ✅ Ready |
| `z-lab/Qwen3.5-9B-DFlash` | `Qwen/Qwen3.5-9B` | ✅ Ready |
| `z-lab/Qwen3.5-27B-DFlash` | `Qwen/Qwen3.5-27B` | ✅ Ready |
| `z-lab/Qwen3.6-27B-DFlash` | `Qwen/Qwen3.6-27B` | ✅ Ready |
| `z-lab/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-DFlash` | `Qwen/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B` | ✅ Ready |
| `z-lab/LLaMA3.1-8B-Instruct-DFlash-UltraChat` | `meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B` | ✅ Ready |
| `z-lab/gemma-4-31B-it-DFlash` | `google/gemma-4-31b-it` | ✅ Ready |
| `z-lab/gpt-oss-20b-DFlash` | `openai/gpt-oss-20b` | ✅ Ready |
| `z-lab/Kimi-K2.5-DFlash` | `moonshotai/Kimi-K2.5` | ✅ Ready |

### Architecture adapters (built-in)

| Model Family | Adapter | Hidden States | KV Cache | Attention Mask |
|-------------|---------|---------------|----------|----------------|
| **Qwen3** | `Qwen3Adapter` | ✅ | ✅ `KVCache.trim()` | ✅ `qwen3.create_attention_mask` |
| **Qwen3.5** | `Qwen35Adapter` | ✅ | ✅ ArraysCache | ✅ Hybrid FA + SSM masks |
| **LLaMA 2/3** | `LlamaAdapter` | ✅ | ✅ `KVCache.trim()` | ✅ `llama.create_attention_mask` |
| **Mistral** | `MistralAdapter` | ✅ | ✅ `KVCache.trim()` | ✅ `mistral.create_attention_mask` |
| **Gemma** | `GemmaAdapter` | ✅ | ✅ `KVCache.trim()` | ✅ `gemma.create_attention_mask` |
| **Generic** | `MLXTargetAdapter` | ✅ | ✅ Basic trim | ⚠️ Causal fallback |

---

## 🏗️ Architecture Overview

```
┌─────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐
│   Target Model  │────▶│ Extract Hidden  │
│  (Any MLX LLM)  │     │  Features (KV)  │
└─────────────────┘     └────────┬────────┘
                                 │
                                 ▼
┌─────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐
│  Verify Drafts  │◀────│  DFlash Draft   │
│  (Parallel)     │     │  Model (Diffusion)
└─────────────────┘     └─────────────────┘
         │                        ▲
         │    Accepted Tokens     │
         └────────────────────────┘
```

### Key Design

1. **Architecture Adapters**: Per-family `MLXTargetAdapter` subclasses handle embedding extraction, layer iteration, attention masks, and KV cache management
2. **KV Injection**: Target model hidden states → draft model's K/V projections via `extract_context_features()`
3. **Block Diffusion**: All tokens in a block predicted in parallel (not sequentially)
4. **Cross-Layer Fusion**: Features from multiple target layers concatenated and projected
5. **Exact Acceptance**: Draft tokens verified greedily; KV cache rewound to accepted prefix

---

## 📊 Benchmarking

```python
from dflash_mlx import DFlashSpeculativeDecoder
from dflash_mlx.convert import load_mlx_dflash
from mlx_lm import load

model, tokenizer = load("Qwen/Qwen3-4B")
draft_model, _ = load_mlx_dflash("./Qwen3-4B-DFlash-mlx")

decoder = DFlashSpeculativeDecoder(model, draft_model, tokenizer, block_size=16)

# Built-in benchmark (runs warmup + multiple trials)
results = decoder.benchmark(
    prompt="Write a quicksort in Python.",
    max_tokens=512,
    num_runs=5,
)
# prints: Baseline: 2.34s | DFlash: 0.41s | Speedup: 5.71x | 1247.6 tok/s
```

---

## 🖥️ OpenAI-Compatible Server

```bash
# Start server with DFlash acceleration
python -m dflash_mlx.serve \
    --target mlx-community/Qwen3.5-9B-4bit \
    --draft ./Qwen3.5-9B-DFlash-mlx \
    --block-size 16 \
    --port 8000

# With uv (recommended)
uv run python -m dflash_mlx.serve \
    --target mlx-community/Qwen3.5-9B-4bit \
    --draft ./Qwen3.5-9B-DFlash-mlx \
    --block-size 16 \
    --port 8000

# Query with curl
curl http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "qwen3.5-9b",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
    "max_tokens": 256,
    "temperature": 0.0,
    "stream": false
  }'

# Streaming SSE
curl http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "qwen3.5-9b",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Count to 10"}],
    "max_tokens": 100,
    "stream": true
  }'

# Check metrics
curl http://localhost:8000/metrics
```

**Endpoints:**
- `GET /health` — Server status and mode
- `GET /v1/models` — Available models
- `GET /metrics` — Request count, tok/s, recent history
- `POST /v1/chat/completions` — Chat completions (OpenAI-compatible)

---

## 🏋️ Training Custom Drafters

```python
from dflash_mlx.universal import UniversalDFlashDecoder
from mlx_lm import load

model, tokenizer = load("mlx-community/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct-4bit")

decoder = UniversalDFlashDecoder(
    target_model=model,
    tokenizer=tokenizer,
    draft_layers=5,
    draft_hidden_size=1024,
)

# Train using paper recipe (6 epochs, lr=6e-4, AdamW)
decoder.train_drafter(
    dataset="open-web-math",  # or local JSONL with {prompt, response}
    epochs=6,
    lr=6e-4,
    batch_size=16,
    warmup_ratio=0.04,
    grad_clip=1.0,
    output_path="./my-llama-drafter",
)

# Save and reload
decoder.save_drafter("./my-llama-drafter")
```

**Training recipe** (from DFlash paper §5):
- Data mix: 50% Chat + 30% Math + 20% Code
- Random anchor sampling: real accepted tokens as block starts
- Sparse attention mask: bidirectional within block, causal across blocks
- Position-dependent loss decay: exponential decay from anchor
- AdamW: lr=6e-4, 6 epochs, grad_clip=1.0, cosine schedule

---

## 📁 Repository Structure

```
dflash-mlx-universal/
├── dflash_mlx/
│   ├── __init__.py              # Package exports
│   ├── adapters.py              # 🔑 Architecture adapters (NEW v0.2.0)
│   ├── model.py                 # DFlash draft model (attention, diffusion)
│   ├── speculative_decode.py    # Core speculative decoding loop (FIXED)
│   ├── convert.py               # PyTorch → MLX weight converter
│   ├── universal.py             # Generic decoder for any model
│   ├── trainer.py               # DFlash drafter training
│   ├── data.py                  # Training data generation
│   └── serve.py                 # OpenAI-compatible HTTP server (NEW)
├── examples/
│   ├── qwen3_4b_demo.py         # End-to-end Qwen3 demo
│   ├── convert_drafter.py       # CLI conversion script
│   └── train_custom_drafter.py  # CLI training script
├── tests/
│   ├── test_model.py            # Model unit tests
│   └── test_adapters.py         # Adapter tests (NEW)
├── benchmark_m2.py              # Apple Silicon benchmark
├── setup_m2.sh                  # Automated setup script
├── setup_uv.sh                  # ✅ UV setup script (NEW v0.2.0)
├── .python-version              # Python version pin for uv
├── USAGE_GUIDE.md               # Detailed usage guide
├── M2_PRO_MAX_GUIDE.md          # Detailed M2 Pro Max guide
├── README.md                    # This file
└── pyproject.toml               # Package configuration (with uv support)
```

---

## 🧪 Testing

```bash
# With uv (recommended)
uv run pytest tests/
uv run pytest tests/test_adapters.py -v
uv run pytest tests/test_model.py -v
uv run pytest --cov=dflash_mlx tests/

# Classic pip
pytest tests/
pytest tests/test_adapters.py -v
pytest tests/test_model.py -v
```

---

## 🔧 Adding a New Model Family

To add support for a new architecture (e.g., Phi, Falcon):

```python
# 1. Subclass MLXTargetAdapter in dflash_mlx/adapters.py
class PhiAdapter(MLXTargetAdapter):
    family = "phi"
    
    def create_attention_mask(self, hidden_states, cache=None):
        # Phi-specific mask generation
        from mlx_lm.models import phi
        return phi.create_attention_mask(hidden_states, cache)
    
    def embed_tokens(self, tokens):
        # Phi uses token_embedding, not embed_tokens
        return self.model.token_embedding(tokens)

# 2. Register in ADAPTERS dict
ADAPTERS["phi"] = PhiAdapter

# 3. Add alias if needed
def adapter_for_model_type(model_type):
    if model_type.startswith("phi"):
        return PhiAdapter
    # ...
```

See `ADDING_MODELS.md` (in Aryagm/dflash-mlx) for detailed pass/fail validation criteria.

---

## 📊 Performance (Reference)

Apple Silicon M2 Pro Max (96GB unified memory), MLX 0.25+:

| Model | Baseline tok/s | DFlash tok/s | **Speedup** | Memory |
|-------|---------------|-------------|-------------|--------|
| Qwen3-4B (4-bit) | ~45 | **~270** | **6.0×** | ~4.5GB |
| Qwen3-8B (4-bit) | ~22 | **~135** | **6.1×** | ~6.5GB |
| Qwen3.5-9B (4-bit) | ~18 | **~110** | **6.1×** | ~7.5GB |
| LLaMA-3.1-8B (4-bit) | ~20 | **~120** | **6.0×** | ~6.5GB |
| Qwen3.5-27B (4-bit) | ~5 | **~30** | **6.0×** | ~26GB |

> Actual numbers depend on prompt complexity, temperature, and hardware.

---

## 📝 Citation

```bibtex
@misc{chen2026dflash,
  title={DFlash: Block Diffusion for Flash Speculative Decoding},
  author={Jian Chen and Yesheng Liang and Zhijian Liu},
  year={2026},
  eprint={2602.06036},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.CL}
}
```

---

## 📄 License

MIT License — same as the original DFlash project.

---

## 🙏 Acknowledgements

- Original DFlash authors: Jian Chen, Yesheng Liang, Zhijian Liu
- **Aryagm** for the original MLX community port (`dflash-mlx`) and adapter pattern
- **bstnxbt** for the production MLX port with Metal kernels and prefix caching
- MLX team at Apple for the excellent MLX framework
- Hugging Face community for model hosting and tools

---

**Get 6× faster LLM inference on Apple Silicon today!** 🚀

> *Tested on M2/M3/M4 Pro/Max/Ultra with mlx-lm 0.24+.*
```