Sliding-window attention

Reference implementation and checkpoint configuration deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash @ 2cba9e4 · parameter count checked against the checkpoint’s tensor headers · text model only · How to read

40 layers › Window layer › Sliding-window attention

Attention update

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tensorx

What attention hands to the streams.

shape
Δattn\Delta_{\mathrm{attn}} [B batch, T positions, 5120 d]
Sources

Contextual evidence from Sliding-window attention

Attention owns a low-rank query, one key–value projection, a learned sink per head, a grouped low-rank output, a ring buffer for the window, and, by the two source lists, a compressor and an indexer; layers that attend to compressed positions use the larger rotary base with YaRN.

attention-init · deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash / inference/model.py
Pinned revision 2cba9e42aa02 ↗ · lines 613–698

Read code excerpt
class Attention(nn.Module):
    """Latent attention over two KV sources at once, concatenated into one `sparse_attn` call: a
    sliding window of raw KV, plus -- when compress_ratio > 0 -- `index_topk` compressed positions
    reaching further back. Q and the output projection are both low-rank, the latter grouped.

    compress_ratio > 0 does not mean the layer compresses its own KV: only kv_source_layers do,
    the rest read that same cache.
    """

    def __init__(self, layer_id: int, args: ModelArgs):
        super().__init__()
        self.layer_id = layer_id
        self.dim = args.dim
        self.n_heads = args.n_heads
        self.n_local_heads = args.n_heads // world_size
        self.q_lora_rank = args.q_lora_rank
        self.o_lora_rank = args.o_lora_rank
        self.head_dim = args.head_dim
        self.rope_head_dim = args.rope_head_dim
        self.nope_head_dim = args.head_dim - args.rope_head_dim
        self.n_groups = args.o_groups
        self.n_local_groups = self.n_groups // world_size
        self.window_size = args.window_size
        self.compress_ratio = args.compress_ratios[layer_id]
        self.eps = args.norm_eps

        self.attn_sink = nn.Parameter(torch.empty(self.n_local_heads, dtype=torch.float32))
        self.wq_a = Linear(self.dim, self.q_lora_rank)
        self.q_norm = RMSNorm(self.q_lora_rank, self.eps)
        self.wq_b = ColumnParallelLinear(self.q_lora_rank, self.n_heads * self.head_dim)
        self.wkv = Linear(self.dim, self.head_dim)
        self.kv_norm = RMSNorm(self.head_dim, self.eps)
        self.wo_a = ColumnParallelLinear(
            self.n_heads * self.head_dim // self.n_groups,
            self.n_groups * args.o_lora_rank,
            dtype=torch.bfloat16,
        )
        self.wo_b = RowParallelLinear(self.n_groups * args.o_lora_rank, self.dim)
        self.softmax_scale = self.head_dim**-0.5

        is_backbone = layer_id < args.n_layers
        self.is_kv_source = is_backbone and layer_id in args.kv_source_layers
        self.is_index_source = is_backbone and layer_id in args.index_source_layers
        self.compressor: Compressor | None = None
        self.indexer: Indexer | None = None
        if self.is_kv_source:
            self.compressor = Compressor(args, layer_id)
        if self.is_index_source:
            self.indexer = Indexer(args, layer_id)

        self.window_kv_cache: torch.Tensor
        self.register_buffer(
            "window_kv_cache",
            torch.zeros(args.max_batch_size, args.window_size, self.head_dim),
            persistent=False,
        )
        if self.is_kv_source:
            self.compress_kv_cache: torch.Tensor
            self.register_buffer(
                "compress_kv_cache",
                torch.zeros(
                    args.max_batch_size,
                    args.max_seq_len // self.compress_ratio,
                    self.head_dim,
                ),
                persistent=False,
            )
        if self.compress_ratio:
            original_seq_len, rope_theta = (
                args.original_seq_len,
                args.compress_rope_theta,
            )
        else:
            # disable YaRN and use base rope_theta in pure sliding-window attention
            original_seq_len, rope_theta = 0, args.rope_theta
        freqs_cis = precompute_freqs_cis(
            self.rope_head_dim,
            args.max_seq_len,
            original_seq_len,
            rope_theta,
            args.rope_factor,
            args.beta_fast,
            args.beta_slow,
        )
        self.freqs_cis: torch.Tensor
        self.register_buffer("freqs_cis", freqs_cis, persistent=False)

Contextual evidence from Sliding-window attention

Queries through the latent with their rotary part rotated; window and compressed keys and values joined; sparse attention over the listed positions; the output rotated back, projected per group of heads and then to the model width.

attention-forward · deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash / inference/model.py
Pinned revision 2cba9e42aa02 ↗ · lines 765–789

Read code excerpt
    def forward(self, x: torch.Tensor, start_pos: int):
        bsz, seqlen, _ = x.size()
        freqs_cis = self.freqs_cis[start_pos : start_pos + seqlen]
        rd = self.rope_head_dim

        qr = self.q_norm(self.wq_a(x))
        q = self.wq_b(qr).unflatten(-1, (self.n_local_heads, self.head_dim))
        apply_rotary_emb(q[..., -rd:], freqs_cis)

        kv, topk_idxs = self._window_kv(x, freqs_cis, start_pos)
        if self.compress_ratio:
            compress_kv, compress_idxs = self._compress_kv(x, qr, start_pos, kv.size(1))
            kv = torch.cat([kv, compress_kv], dim=1)
            topk_idxs = torch.cat([topk_idxs, compress_idxs], dim=-1)

        o = sparse_attn(q, kv, self.attn_sink, topk_idxs, self.softmax_scale)
        apply_rotary_emb(o[..., -rd:], freqs_cis, True)

        # wo_a is block-diagonal over groups (each projects only its own heads), hence einsum not
        # Linear. convert.py dequantizes it to bf16; an fp8 grouped GEMM would halve the memory.
        o = o.view(bsz, seqlen, self.n_local_groups, -1)
        wo_a = self.wo_a.weight.view(self.n_local_groups, self.o_lora_rank, -1)
        o = torch.einsum("bsgd,grd->bsgr", o, wo_a)
        x = self.wo_b(o.flatten(2))
        return x

Contextual evidence from Sliding-window attention

The reference configuration: 40 layers of width 5,120, 64 heads of 512 features with a 64-feature rotary part, a 1,280-feature query latent, a grouped output of 8 groups at rank 1,024, a window of 128, the per-layer compression ratios and the two source lists, the indexer and its candidate stage, hyper-connections of 4 streams, 384 routed experts of which 6 are used with 1 shared, Engram before layers 1 and 14, and three DSpark blocks.

config · deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash / inference/config.json
Pinned revision 2cba9e42aa02 ↗ · lines 1–66

Read code excerpt
{
    "vocab_size": 129280,
    "dim": 5120,
    "moe_inter_dim": 2304,
    "n_layers": 40,
    "n_mtp_layers": 3,
    "dspark_block_size": 5,
    "dspark_noise_token_id": 128799,
    "dspark_target_layer_ids": [37, 38, 39],
    "dspark_markov_rank": 256,
    "dspark_n_routed_experts": 128,
    "dspark_n_activated_experts": 3,
    "n_heads": 64,
    "n_routed_experts": 384,
    "n_shared_experts": 1,
    "n_activated_experts": 6,
    "score_func": "sqrtsoftplus",
    "route_scale": 1.5,
    "swiglu_limit": 10.0,
    "q_lora_rank": 1280,
    "head_dim": 512,
    "rope_head_dim": 64,
    "norm_eps": 1e-20,
    "o_groups": 8,
    "o_lora_rank": 1024,
    "window_size": 128,
    "kv_source_layers": [2, 8, 14, 20],
    "index_source_layers": [2, 8, 14, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36],
    "original_seq_len": 65536,
    "rope_theta": 10000,
    "rope_factor": 16,
    "beta_fast": 32,
    "beta_slow": 1,
    "index_n_heads": 32,
    "index_head_dim": 128,
    "index_topk": 512,
    "candidate_source_layer": 20,
    "candidate_topk_blocks": 2048,
    "candidate_block_size": 8,
    "hc_mult": 4,
    "hc_sinkhorn_iters": 20,
    "hc_eps": 1e-06,
    "engram_layer_ids": [1, 14],
    "engram_vocab_size": 16000000,
    "engram_num_embeddings": [384006168, 384016682],
    "engram_max_ngram_size": 4,
    "engram_pad_id": 2,
    "engram_compressed_vocab_size": 99092,
    "dtype": "fp8",
    "expert_dtype": "fp4",
    "compress_rope_theta": 160000,
    "compress_ratios": [0, 0, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0],
    "vision_n_layers": 32,
    "vision_dim": 1024,
    "vision_n_heads": 16,
    "vision_inter_dim": 2816,
    "vision_patch_size": 14,
    "vision_downsample_ratio": 3,
    "vision_max_n_token": 1024,
    "vision_min_pixels": 295936,
    "vision_max_wh_ratio": null,
    "image_token_id": 129264,
    "engram_n_heads": 8,
    "engram_head_dim": 256,
    "vision_rope_theta": 10000
}

Contextual evidence from Grouped output

Rotary frequencies with the YaRN scaling above the original context, and the rotation of adjacent feature pairs, with an inverse.

rope · deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash / inference/model.py
Pinned revision 2cba9e42aa02 ↗ · lines 369–406

Read code excerpt
def precompute_freqs_cis(dim, seqlen, original_seq_len, base, factor, beta_fast, beta_slow) -> torch.Tensor:
    """Rotary frequencies as complex exponentials, one row per position.

    With original_seq_len > 0 this applies YaRN: dimensions whose wavelength already fits inside the
    training context keep their frequency, those far beyond it are divided by `factor`, and the
    `beta_fast`..`beta_slow` band in between is faded across with a linear ramp.
    """
    freqs = 1.0 / (base ** (torch.arange(0, dim, 2, dtype=torch.float32) / dim))
    if original_seq_len > 0:
        # the dim whose wavelength completes `rotations` turns over the training context
        def corrected_dim(rotations):
            return dim * math.log(original_seq_len / (rotations * 2 * math.pi)) / (2 * math.log(base))

        low = max(math.floor(corrected_dim(beta_fast)), 0)
        high = min(math.ceil(corrected_dim(beta_slow)), dim - 1)
        ramp = ((torch.arange(dim // 2, dtype=torch.float32) - low) / max(high - low, 1e-3)).clamp(0, 1)
        smooth = 1 - ramp
        freqs = freqs / factor * (1 - smooth) + freqs * smooth

    freqs = torch.outer(torch.arange(seqlen), freqs)
    return torch.polar(torch.ones_like(freqs), freqs)


def apply_rotary_emb(x: torch.Tensor, freqs_cis: torch.Tensor, inverse: bool = False) -> torch.Tensor:
    """Rotate `x` in place, taking adjacent element pairs as complex numbers. Accepts [b, s, d] and
    [b, s, h, d]; `inverse` conjugates the rotation, which is how the attention output gets the
    query's rotation removed again so the cache can stay in one shared rotated form."""
    y = x
    x = torch.view_as_complex(x.float().unflatten(-1, (-1, 2)))
    if inverse:
        freqs_cis = freqs_cis.conj()
    if x.ndim == 3:
        freqs_cis = freqs_cis.view(1, x.size(1), x.size(-1))
    else:
        freqs_cis = freqs_cis.view(1, x.size(1), 1, x.size(-1))
    x = torch.view_as_real(x * freqs_cis).flatten(-2)
    y.copy_(x)
    return y