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Rethinking Attention with Performers

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abstract

We introduce Performers, Transformer architectures which can estimate regular (softmax) full-rank-attention Transformers with provable accuracy, but using only linear (as opposed to quadratic) space and time complexity, without relying on any priors such as sparsity or low-rankness. To approximate softmax attention-kernels, Performers use a novel Fast Attention Via positive Orthogonal Random features approach (FAVOR+), which may be of independent interest for scalable kernel methods. FAVOR+ can be also used to efficiently model kernelizable attention mechanisms beyond softmax. This representational power is crucial to accurately compare softmax with other kernels for the first time on large-scale tasks, beyond the reach of regular Transformers, and investigate optimal attention-kernels. Performers are linear architectures fully compatible with regular Transformers and with strong theoretical guarantees: unbiased or nearly-unbiased estimation of the attention matrix, uniform convergence and low estimation variance. We tested Performers on a rich set of tasks stretching from pixel-prediction through text models to protein sequence modeling. We demonstrate competitive results with other examined efficient sparse and dense attention methods, showcasing effectiveness of the novel attention-learning paradigm leveraged by Performers.

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  • abstract We introduce Performers, Transformer architectures which can estimate regular (softmax) full-rank-attention Transformers with provable accuracy, but using only linear (as opposed to quadratic) space and time complexity, without relying on any priors such as sparsity or low-rankness. To approximate softmax attention-kernels, Performers use a novel Fast Attention Via positive Orthogonal Random features approach (FAVOR+), which may be of independent interest for scalable kernel methods. FAVOR+ can be also used to efficiently model kernelizable attention mechanisms beyond softmax. This representat

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H$^{2}$MT: Semantic Hierarchy-Aware Hierarchical Memory Transformer

cs.CL · 2026-05-24 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

H²MT uses offline semantic hierarchy construction, bottom-up memory aggregation, and coarse-to-fine query routing to achieve competitive QA quality with lower memory and latency than flat or retrieval baselines on LongBench tasks.

Elastic Attention Cores for Scalable Vision Transformers

cs.CV · 2026-05-12 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

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Compute Where it Counts: Self Optimizing Language Models

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Training Transformers for KV Cache Compressibility

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