Researchers at Intel Labs introduced FastDraft, an efficient framework for training and aligning draft models compatible with various target LLMs, including Phi-3-mini and Llama-3.1-8B. FastDraft stands out by employing a structured approach to pre-training and fine-tuning. Pre-training focuses on processing datasets containing up to 10 billion tokens of natural language and code while fine-tuning uses sequence-level knowledge distillation to improve draft-target alignment. This process ensures that the draft models achieve optimal performance across diverse tasks.
FastDraft’s architecture imposes minimal requirements, allowing for flexibility in model design while ensuring compatibility with the target LLM’s vocabulary. During pre-training, the draft model predicts the next token in a sequence, using datasets like FineWeb for natural language and The Stack v2 for code. The alignment phase employs synthetic datasets generated by the target model, refining the draft model’s ability to mimic the target model’s behavior. These techniques ensure that the draft model maintains high efficiency and accuracy…
