This cat doesn’t exist – I generated it today on my iPad in the last couple of seconds.
Surprisingly, just 1 year ago we were amazed at the ability to run the Stable Diffusion neural network on a Mac and, finally, simple, uncomplicated small pictures in a minute or two.
Today the same thing was possible three times, and sometimes 15 times faster, with incomparably high quality, greater freedom, without complex settings, for free. And still without the Internet and the transfer of personal data. Even on iPhone and iPad.
A week ago, the creators of good neural networks Stable Diffusion sent it multiple times accelerated version – SDXL Turbo. On fast computers with a powerful graphics card, it allows you to receive high-quality images at the same speed as you write a request – this happens practically the first time, in a matter of seconds. Skünd.
The easiest way to try SDXL Turbo is to install the program Draw things. This is the best application for local (no servers or Internet) image generation on powerful Apple devices. Since it does not have a single analogue, the developer fundamentally does not demand money for this and does not contribute any monetization.
Less than five days after the release of the neural network, SDXL Turbo support appeared in Draw Things. I tried Stable Diffusion acceleration on my Mac and iPad and am still impressed. And this, as usual in the world of neural networks, is just the beginning.
What is Stable Diffusion and SDXL Turbo
Who missed it Stable diffusion (SD) is the leading and most advanced completely free neural network that can work without the Internet on modern devices. Most often it is used to create images. I agree that this is difficult to surprise today, especially with all sorts of Imaginariums, the popularization of Midjourney and a dozen other analogues from other companies.
The advantage of diabetes compared to coronavirus is the main thing in its possibilities 100% local use. In the case of all other methods, you transfer some computing power to the network and have limited control over it, paying either with personal data or any (and personal data). And from the SD card, you can download everything you need and create the entire image on your device. No Internet, no requests to the server, no data leaks to anyone who knows where, no monthly payments, etc. no restriction.
The new version of SD, SDXL Turbo, greatly complicates the process of generating high-quality images. Instead of 20-40 so-called “steps” (steps), now 1, maximum 4 steps are enough. The quality and accuracy are not much worse than on regular SDXL, the speed is just much higher.
What SDXL Turbo gives you instead
Let’s take the program Draw things for iOS and MacOS. In it, generating an image via SDXL (not Tubro) at a resolution of 1024×1024 on an iPad with an M1 processor takes from 65 to 100 seconds. Taking into account all factors, from image resolution to hardware performance, this is a very good result. Was.
SDXL Turbo speeds up this process several times. For example, 25 seconds on an iPad with an M1 processor. And on a Mac with Apple processors, the results will be even faster. For example, the same picture is created on the M1 Max chip. in just 13 seconds.
I think that on the M2 Max or M3 Max you can achieve success in 7-8 seconds. If this seems slow to you, let me remind you: the image is sequential is yours The source, not the super-duper expensive servers on the Internet. Therefore, this is without exaggeration the cool result that is the reason is yours forever. The method will work forever, even if tomorrow all online services in the world close (or impose paid subscriptions, limits and other conditions of use).
How to install and try SDXL Turbo right now
SDXL requires much more powerful hardware than regular SD. SDXL Turbo has even slightly higher requirements. Therefore, I recommend trying the updated neural network exclusively on Apple gadgets with at least 8 gigabytes of RAM. This is the iPhone 15, as well as all iPads with chips from M1 and more powerful.
Most likely, within a week there will be an optimization that will allow you to successfully use SDXL Turbo on Apple devices with increasing amounts of RAM, including previous iPhone standards. So far I have not been able to complete the generation on the iPhone 13 Pro Max (the application crashes at the end), but on the iPad Pro with M1 everything works correctly.
1. Download Draw Things from the App Store. It’s free, no ads, no registrations and no restrictions.
2. When you launch the program, you’ll be prompted to download a “checkpoint” – a very crude approach to data basics that allows SD to restrict images at your request. SDXL Turbo is used.
I warn you that the file weighs 4.9 GB, nothing can be done about it.
3. After loading, the generator window will open. In the field in the letter the request is in English. But before that, you need to change the source:
▪ Sampler: LCM
▪ Image size: resolution 1024×1024.
▪ Seed: New seed at generation.
▪ Steps: 4
▪ Source image size: 1024×1024.
▪ Target image size: 1024×1024.
▪ First pass size: 512×512.
These are not recommended settings, they just gave me the best results with the current version of the program.
4. Click Generate and wait. Don’t hide the app in iOS to perform the generation. On Mac you can hide it.
5. Liked? Then click on the “Save” icon to save the images in the device memory.
Instead of a finale – 7 examples of what I generated today. This is not a demonstration of the maximum capabilities of the SDXL Turbo – just an example of what can be expected without any dynamics.
Source: Iphones RU
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
