arXiv:2505.16333cs.LG2025-05NeurIPS

将微分注意力机制高效融入预训练模型,显著提升性能。

Understanding Differential Transformer Unchains Pretrained Self-Attentions

  • 复用原模型注意力分数,轻量添加微分操作
  • 在多个基准上实现显著提升,仅需极少适配数据
  • 适合希望低成本升级大模型的开发者

微分变压器近年来因出色的实证表现受到广泛关注,常被认为具备噪声抵消注意力能力。然而其实际优势的来源仍不清晰,且该架构需从头大规模训练,难以利用开源预训练权重。本文深入研究微分变压器,揭示其成功三大因素:(1) 通过负向注意力增强表达能力,(2) 降低注意力头间冗余,(3) 改善学习动态。基于此,提出DEX方法,可高效将微分注意力优势融入预训练语言模型。通过复用softmax注意力分数,并在输出值矩阵上添加轻量级微分操作,DEX在训练与推理上均保持轻量。实验表明,DEX在多个基准上显著提升预训练LLM性能,仅需小于0.01%的适应数据即可实现显著增益。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Differential Transformer has recently gained significant attention for its impressive empirical performance, often attributed to its ability to perform noise canceled attention. However, precisely how differential attention achieves its empirical benefits remains poorly understood. Moreover, Differential Transformer architecture demands large-scale training from scratch, hindering utilization of open pretrained weights. In this work, we conduct an in-depth investigation of Differential Transformer, uncovering three key factors behind its success: (1) enhanced expressivity via negative attention, (2) reduced redundancy among attention heads, and (3) improved learning dynamics. Based on these findings, we propose DEX, a novel method to efficiently integrate the advantages of differential attention into pretrained language models. By reusing the softmax attention scores and adding a lightweight differential operation on the output value matrix, DEX effectively incorporates the key advantages of differential attention while remaining lightweight in both training and inference. Evaluations confirm that DEX substantially improves the pretrained LLMs across diverse benchmarks, achieving significant performance gains with minimal adaptation data (< 0.01%).

微分注意力大模型优化轻量化

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