MoDM: Efficient Serving for Image Generation via Mixture-of-Diffusion Models

Abstract: Diffusion-based text-to-image generation models trade latency for quality: small models are fast but generate lower-quality images, while large models produce better images but are slow. We present MoDM, a novel caching-based serving system for diffusion models that dynamically balances latency and quality through a mixture of diffusion models. Unlike prior approaches that rely on model-specific internal features, MoDM caches final images, allowing seamless retrieval and reuse across multiple diffusion model families. This design enables adaptive serving by dynamically balancing latency and image quality: using smaller models for cache-hit requests to reduce latency while reserving larger models for cache-miss requests to maintain quality. Small model image quality is preserved using retrieved cached images. We design a global monitor that optimally allocates GPU resources and balances inference workload, ensuring high throughput while meeting service-level objectives under varying request rates. Our evaluations show that MoDM significantly reduces average serving time by 2.5x while retaining image quality, making it a practical solution for scalable and resource-efficient model deployment.