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cs.AI · 2608.16425 · 2026/08/17

ParaTempo: Efficient Parallel Reasoning via Temporal Confidence

Zhang, Xuteng, Zeng, Wenhao, Gu, Xiaodong, Hu, Chao, Lin, Haotian
TL;DR:ParaTempo 提出 temporal confidence——分支局部的答案空间收敛度量,用单一信号驱动并行推理全流程控制:低置信分支剪枝、持续承诺主导答案的分支提前退休。training-free,无需答案一致性或逐 token 置信。

🎯 问题

并行推理(多路探索)能提精度,但计算成本随深度和分支数增长;现有剪枝/控制信号(最终答案共识、局部 token 置信、孤立中间探针)要么延迟、要么与推理进度脱节、要么太噪。

🔬 方法

每个分支周期性探测 tentative 答案分布,temporal confidence 量化近期中间探针向主导答案的聚集尖锐度;累积足够证据后,用单一信号驱动全部控制:低置信分支剪枝、持续承诺主导答案的分支退休(retire)。training-free、异步并行。
章节结构(全文标题提取):
1 Introduction
2 Problem Formulation
3 A Preliminary Study
4 Methodology
5 Experiments
6 Related Work
7 Conclusion

📊 结果

对比现有并行路径管理方法在推理精度/成本曲线上占优;比传统答案共识、局部置信等信号更早且更稳地识别「已收敛/该剪枝」分支。

💡 与研究方向关联

与 duplex 的 Thinking Layer 最接近的推理侧论文:异步、deferred 的 branch-level 决策,靠时间维度上的置信收敛而非同步共识——「延迟但在必要时出手」的调度哲学与 duplex 异步推理层同构。

📝 原文摘要

▶ 原文摘要 Abstract
Parallel reasoning improves the accuracy and robustness of large reasoning models by exploring multiple solution paths, but its computational cost grows with reasoning depth and branch count. Existing methods for managing these parallel paths typically rely on final-answer consensus, local token confidence, or isolated intermediate probes. However, these signals are often delayed, weakly tied to actual reasoning progress, or too noisy for dynamic, branch-level control. To address these limitations, we introduce ParaTempo, a training-free asynchronous parallel reasoning framework. ParaTempo is driven by temporal confidence, a branch-local measure of answer-space convergence. Each branch is periodically probed for a tentative answer probability distribution, and temporal confidence quantifies how sharply the recent intermediate probes concentrate on a dominant answer. Once sufficient evidence has accumulated, ParaTempo drives its entire control process from this single signal: low-confidence branches are pruned, branches that persistently commit to their dominant answer are retired early, freed computation is reallocated by forking new branches, and generation stops globally once the confidence-weighted vote concentrates. Without requiring synchronization among reasoning trajectories, ParaTempo adaptively allocates computation based on branch-level convergence. Experiments on challenging mathematical and scientific reasoning benchmarks show that ParaTempo reduces average latency by 21.8-32.2% and total token usage by 18.1-30.3% while maintaining competitive accuracy. Moreover, temporal confidence exhibits stronger temporal stability and predictive power for future branch convergence than token-level and instantaneous signals.
Deep Read · 2026-08-19高松灯 / Agent 日报 · Agent 架构与推理
并行推理TemporalConfidence异步控制推理调度