arXiv:2604.08565cs.CLcs.AI2026-04

用树形结构稀疏化注意力模型,动态激活少于5%的计算单元。

Dynamic sparsity in tree-structured feed-forward layers at scale

论文配图:Dynamic sparsity in tree-structured feed-forward layers at scale
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 通过硬路由实现树状结构的动态稀疏,无需额外路由器。
  • 每令牌仅激活不足5%的前馈单元,性能媲美稠密模型。
  • 自动修剪机制使动态路由转为静态稀疏,适合大模型压缩。

在典型上下文长度下,前馈MLP模块占Transformer计算预算的很大比例,促使研究稀疏替代方案。本文首次将树状结构前馈层作为深度Transformer架构中MLP模块的即插即用替代品,通过硬层级路由实现条件计算,无需独立路由器。实验证明该方法适用于自回归语言建模及下游问答任务,包括零样本和少样本场景,且可扩展至超过10亿参数。尽管每令牌激活的前馈单元少于5%,模型在受控训练与微调协议下性能与稠密基线相当。我们进一步分析训练动态,发现硬路由与非对称非线性相互作用产生自发修剪效应:未使用路径逐渐失效,实现动态路由向静态结构稀疏的部分转化。简单架构设计即可调控此行为,无需辅助损失恢复平衡树结构。整体表明,树状前馈层为大规模Transformer模型提供了可扩展、可控制的稀疏化机制。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

At typical context lengths, the feed-forward MLP block accounts for a large share of a transformer's compute budget, motivating sparse alternatives to dense MLP blocks. We study sparse, tree-structured feed-forward layers as drop-in replacements for MLP blocks in deep transformer architectures, enabling conditional computation via hard hierarchical routing without a separate router network. We demonstrate for the first time that this form of tree-structured conditional sparsity can be applied for autoregressive language modeling and downstream question answering, including zero- and few-shot settings, and its scalability beyond 1B parameters. Despite activating fewer than 5% of the feed-forward block's units per token, our models match dense baselines under controlled training and fine-tuning protocols. We further analyze training dynamics and identify an emergent auto-pruning effect: the interaction of hard routing with asymmetric nonlinearities progressively deactivates unused paths, yielding partial conversion of dynamic routing into static structural sparsity. We show that simple architectural choices can modulate this behavior and recover balanced trees without auxiliary losses. Overall, our work demonstrates that tree-structured feed-forward layers provide a scalable and controllable mechanism for sparsifying large transformer models.

稀疏化Transformer动态路由结构压缩

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