Goose: Anisotropic Speculation Trees for Training-Free Speculative Decoding

Tao Jin, Phuong Minh Nguyen, Naoya Inoue · Apr 2, 2026 · Citations: 0

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Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

Speculative decoding accelerates large language model inference by drafting multiple candidate tokens and verifying them in a single forward pass. Candidates are organized as a tree: deeper trees accept more tokens per step, but adding depth requires sacrificing breadth (fallback options) under a fixed verification budget. Existing training-free methods draft from a single token source and shape their trees without distinguishing candidate quality across origins. We observe that two common training-free token sources - n-gram matches copied from the input context, and statistical predictions from prior forward passes - differ dramatically in acceptance rate (~6x median gap, range 2-18x across five models and five benchmarks). We prove that when such a quality gap exists, the optimal tree is anisotropic (asymmetric): reliable tokens should form a deep chain while unreliable tokens spread as wide branches, breaking through the depth limit of balanced trees. We realize this structure in GOOSE, a training-free framework that builds an adaptive spine tree - a deep chain of high-acceptance context-matched tokens with wide branches of low-acceptance alternatives at each node. We prove that the number of tokens accepted per step is at least as large as that of either source used alone. On five LLMs (7B-33B) and five benchmarks, GOOSE achieves 1.9-4.3x lossless speedup, outperforming balanced-tree baselines by 12-33% under the same budget.

Abstract-only analysis — low confidence

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This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.
The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.
The abstract does not clearly describe the evaluation setup.
The abstract does not clearly name benchmarks or metrics.

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Should You Rely On This Paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

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Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Weak / implicit signal

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 15%

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What We Could Verify

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