RunningTensor: Generalizing Linear Attention to Higher-Order Recurrent States

📅 2026-09-11
📈 Citations: 0
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🤖 AI Summary
本文通过引入RunningTensor,将线性注意力的内存从二阶张量扩展到高阶张量,以提高模型在序列建模中的记忆容量和性能。
📝 Abstract
Linear attention and state-space models provide linear-time sequence modeling, but their recurrent memory remains a second-order tensor (a matrix), limiting the order of interactions that can be represented in the state. We introduce the RunningTensor, which generalizes this memory to an order-$o$ tensor, updated by a rank-1 outer product and read by contracting against $o-1$ vector queries. Order $2$ recovers linear attention; we study order $3$ as a proof of concept, retaining both recurrent and parallel forms while remaining linear in sequence length $T$ and improving working memory capacity from $\mathcal{O}(W^2)$ to $\mathcal{O}(W^o)$. On synthetic multi-query associative recall, RunningTensor outperforms linear-attention and SSM baselines. After pretraining, it also improves performance on language-understanding and non-synthetic retrieval tasks, suggesting that higher-order recurrent state can provide useful additional memory capacity beyond matrix-valued state.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

Linear Attention
State-Space Models
Higher-Order Recurrent States
Working Memory Capacity
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

RunningTensor
higher-order tensor
linear attention
memory capacity
sequence modeling
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