Less Is More: Training-Free Sparse Attention with Global Locality for Efficient Reasoning

Large reasoning models achieve strong performance through test-time scaling but incur substantial computational overhead, particularly from excessive token generation when processing short input prompts. While sparse attention mechanisms can reduce latency and memory usage, existing approaches suffer from significant accuracy degradation due to accumulated errors during long-generation reasoning. These methods generally require either high token retention rates or expensive retraining. We introduce LessIsMore, a training-free sparse attention mechanism for reasoning tasks, which leverages global attention patterns rather than relying on traditional head-specific local optimizations. LessIsMore aggregates token selections from local attention heads with recent contextual information, enabling unified cross-head token ranking for future decoding layers. This unified selection improves generalization and efficiency by avoiding the need to maintain separate token subsets per head. Evaluation across diverse reasoning tasks and benchmarks shows that LessIsMore preserves -- and in some cases improves -- accuracy while achieving a $1.1\times$ average decoding speed-up compared to full attention. Moreover, LessIsMore attends to $2\times$ fewer tokens without accuracy loss, achieving a $1.13\times$ end-to-end speed-up compared to existing sparse attention methods.

Training-free Quantum-Inspired Image Edge Extraction Method

Edge detection is a cornerstone of image processing, yet existing methods often face critical limitations. Traditional deep learning edge detection methods require extensive training datasets and fine-tuning, while classical techniques often fail in complex or noisy scenarios, limiting their real-world applicability. To address these limitations, we propose a training-free, quantum-inspired edge detection model. Our approach integrates classical Sobel edge detection, the Schr\"odinger wave equation refinement, and a hybrid framework combining Canny and Laplacian operators. By eliminating the need for training, the model is lightweight and adaptable to diverse applications. The Schr\"odinger wave equation refines gradient-based edge maps through iterative diffusion, significantly enhancing edge precision. The hybrid framework further strengthens the model by synergistically combining local and global features, ensuring robustness even under challenging conditions. Extensive evaluations on datasets like BIPED, Multicue, and NYUD demonstrate superior performance of the proposed model, achieving state-of-the-art metrics, including ODS, OIS, AP, and F-measure. Noise robustness experiments highlight its reliability, showcasing its practicality for real-world scenarios. Due to its versatile and adaptable nature, our model is well-suited for applications such as medical imaging, autonomous systems, and environmental monitoring, setting a new benchmark for edge detection.