Multi-head latent attention

Checkpoint configuration and implementation moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct @ fd1984e · parameter count checked against the checkpoint’s tensor headers · How to read

61 transformer blocks › 1 dense block › Latent attention

Attention input

×

tensorhidden_states

The normalized features entering attention.

shape
xx [B batch, T positions, 7168 d]
Sources

Contextual evidence from Attention RMSNorm

RMSNorm owns one gain per feature and computes in float32.

rmsnorm · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 94–111

Read code excerpt
class DeepseekV3RMSNorm(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, hidden_size, eps=1e-6):
        """
        DeepseekV3RMSNorm is equivalent to T5LayerNorm
        """
        super().__init__()
        self.weight = nn.Parameter(torch.ones(hidden_size))
        self.variance_epsilon = eps

    def forward(self, hidden_states):
        input_dtype = hidden_states.dtype
        hidden_states = hidden_states.to(torch.float32)
        variance = hidden_states.pow(2).mean(-1, keepdim=True)
        hidden_states = hidden_states * torch.rsqrt(variance + self.variance_epsilon)
        return self.weight * hidden_states.to(input_dtype)


ALL_LAYERNORM_LAYERS.append(DeepseekV3RMSNorm)

Contextual evidence from Attention RMSNorm

A block applies input RMSNorm, attention and a residual addition, then post-attention RMSNorm, the FFN and a second residual addition; the first first_k_dense_replace blocks use the dense MLP, the rest MoE.

block · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 1152–1218

Read code excerpt
        self.mlp = (
            DeepseekV3MoE(config)
            if (
                config.n_routed_experts is not None
                and layer_idx >= config.first_k_dense_replace
                and layer_idx % config.moe_layer_freq == 0
            )
            else DeepseekV3MLP(config)
        )
        self.input_layernorm = DeepseekV3RMSNorm(
            config.hidden_size, eps=config.rms_norm_eps
        )
        self.post_attention_layernorm = DeepseekV3RMSNorm(
            config.hidden_size, eps=config.rms_norm_eps
        )

… lines 1167–1197 omitted …

        residual = hidden_states

        hidden_states = self.input_layernorm(hidden_states)

        # Self Attention
        hidden_states, self_attn_weights, present_key_value = self.self_attn(
            hidden_states=hidden_states,
            attention_mask=attention_mask,
            position_ids=position_ids,
            past_key_value=past_key_value,
            output_attentions=output_attentions,
            use_cache=use_cache,
            **kwargs,
        )
        hidden_states = residual + hidden_states

        # Fully Connected
        residual = hidden_states
        hidden_states = self.post_attention_layernorm(hidden_states)
        hidden_states = self.mlp(hidden_states)
        hidden_states = residual + hidden_states

Contextual evidence from Query compression

MLA owns a query down-projection, query RMSNorm and up-projection, a joint key–value down-projection that also emits the shared rotary key, a latent RMSNorm, a key–value up-projection and an output projection.

mla-init · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 662–688

Read code excerpt
            self.q_a_proj = nn.Linear(
                self.hidden_size, config.q_lora_rank, bias=config.attention_bias
            )
            self.q_a_layernorm = DeepseekV3RMSNorm(config.q_lora_rank)
            self.q_b_proj = nn.Linear(
                config.q_lora_rank, self.num_heads * self.q_head_dim, bias=False
            )

        self.kv_a_proj_with_mqa = nn.Linear(
            self.hidden_size,
            config.kv_lora_rank + config.qk_rope_head_dim,
            bias=config.attention_bias,
        )
        self.kv_a_layernorm = DeepseekV3RMSNorm(config.kv_lora_rank)
        self.kv_b_proj = nn.Linear(
            config.kv_lora_rank,
            self.num_heads
            * (self.q_head_dim - self.qk_rope_head_dim + self.v_head_dim),
            bias=False,
        )

        self.o_proj = nn.Linear(
            self.num_heads * self.v_head_dim,
            self.hidden_size,
            bias=config.attention_bias,
        )
        self._init_rope()

Contextual evidence from Query compression

Queries are produced through a low-rank latent and split into a non-rotated and a rotated part.

mla-queries · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 767–774

Read code excerpt
        if self.q_lora_rank is None:
            q = self.q_proj(hidden_states)
        else:
            q = self.q_b_proj(self.q_a_layernorm(self.q_a_proj(hidden_states)))
        q = q.view(bsz, q_len, self.num_heads, self.q_head_dim).transpose(1, 2)
        q_nope, q_pe = torch.split(
            q, [self.qk_nope_head_dim, self.qk_rope_head_dim], dim=-1
        )

Contextual evidence from Key–value compression

The joint down-projection yields the key–value latent and one rotary key shared by all heads; the latent is normalized and up-projected into per-head content keys and values.

mla-kv · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 776–789

Read code excerpt
        compressed_kv = self.kv_a_proj_with_mqa(hidden_states)
        compressed_kv, k_pe = torch.split(
            compressed_kv, [self.kv_lora_rank, self.qk_rope_head_dim], dim=-1
        )
        k_pe = k_pe.view(bsz, q_len, 1, self.qk_rope_head_dim).transpose(1, 2)
        kv = (
            self.kv_b_proj(self.kv_a_layernorm(compressed_kv))
            .view(bsz, q_len, self.num_heads, self.qk_nope_head_dim + self.v_head_dim)
            .transpose(1, 2)
        )

        k_nope, value_states = torch.split(
            kv, [self.qk_nope_head_dim, self.v_head_dim], dim=-1
        )

Contextual evidence from Key heads

The rotary parts are rotated; each head’s query and key join their non-rotated and rotated parts, the key’s rotated part being the shared rotary key; scores are scaled, masked by the causal mask, normalized and used to mix values.

mla-prefill · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 799–840

Read code excerpt
        cos, sin = self.rotary_emb(value_states, seq_len=kv_seq_len)

        q_pe, k_pe = apply_rotary_pos_emb(q_pe, k_pe, cos, sin, position_ids)

        query_states = k_pe.new_empty(bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, self.q_head_dim)
        query_states[:, :, :, : self.qk_nope_head_dim] = q_nope
        query_states[:, :, :, self.qk_nope_head_dim :] = q_pe

        key_states = k_pe.new_empty(bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, self.q_head_dim)
        key_states[:, :, :, : self.qk_nope_head_dim] = k_nope
        key_states[:, :, :, self.qk_nope_head_dim :] = k_pe
        if past_key_value is not None:
            cache_kwargs = {"sin": sin, "cos": cos}  # Specific to RoPE models
            key_states, value_states = past_key_value.update(
                key_states, value_states, self.layer_idx, cache_kwargs
            )

        attn_weights = (
            torch.matmul(query_states, key_states.transpose(2, 3)) * self.softmax_scale
        )

        if attn_weights.size() != (bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, kv_seq_len):
            raise ValueError(
                f"Attention weights should be of size {(bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, kv_seq_len)}, but is"
                f" {attn_weights.size()}"
            )
        assert attention_mask is not None
        if attention_mask is not None:
            if attention_mask.size() != (bsz, 1, q_len, kv_seq_len):
                raise ValueError(
                    f"Attention mask should be of size {(bsz, 1, q_len, kv_seq_len)}, but is {attention_mask.size()}"
                )
            attn_weights = attn_weights + attention_mask

        # upcast attention to fp32
        attn_weights = nn.functional.softmax(
            attn_weights, dim=-1, dtype=torch.float32
        ).to(query_states.dtype)
        attn_weights = nn.functional.dropout(
            attn_weights, p=self.attention_dropout, training=self.training
        )
        attn_output = torch.matmul(attn_weights, value_states)