$S^3$: Stratified Scaling Search for Test-Time in Diffusion Language Models

Researchers introduce S³ (Stratified Scaling Search), a test-time scaling method for diffusion language models that improves output quality by reallocating compute during the denoising process rather than simple best-of-K sampling. The technique uses a lightweight verifier to evaluate and selectively resample candidate trajectories at each step, demonstrating consistent performance gains across mathematical reasoning and knowledge tasks without requiring model retraining.