OScaR mitigates token norm imbalance via canalized rotation and omni-token scaling to enable near-lossless INT2 KV cache quantization with up to 3x decoding speedup and 5.3x memory reduction.
Attention Sink in Transformers: A Survey on Utilization, Interpretation, and Mitigation
4 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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abstract
As the foundational architecture of modern machine learning, Transformers have driven remarkable progress across diverse AI domains. Despite their transformative impact, a persistent challenge across various Transformers is Attention Sink (AS), in which a disproportionate amount of attention is focused on a small subset of specific yet uninformative tokens. AS complicates interpretability, significantly affecting the training and inference dynamics, and exacerbates issues such as hallucinations. In recent years, substantial research has been dedicated to understanding and harnessing AS. However, a comprehensive survey that systematically consolidates AS-related research and offers guidance for future advancements remains lacking. To address this gap, we present the first survey on AS, structured around three key dimensions that define the current research landscape: Fundamental Utilization, Mechanistic Interpretation, and Strategic Mitigation. Our work provides a pivotal contribution by clarifying key concepts and guiding researchers through the evolution and trends of the field. We envision this survey as a definitive resource, empowering researchers and practitioners to effectively manage AS within the current Transformer paradigm, while simultaneously inspiring innovative advancements for the next generation of Transformers. The paper list of this work is available at https://github.com/ZunhaiSu/Awesome-Attention-Sink.
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background 1representative citing papers
Register tokens enhance pixel-space DiT training and output quality via cleaner high-noise feature maps, and a dual-stream design adds further gains with little overhead.
Priming transfers knowledge from pre-trained Transformers to hybrid SSM-attention models, recovering performance with minimal additional tokens and showing Gated KalmaNet outperforming Mamba-2 on long-context reasoning at 32B scale.
A fixed-contract probe shows value-aware KV eviction recovers needed evidence in 72.6% of accuracy-improving cases on LongBench but only 32.4% otherwise, suggesting an order of recover evidence, rank value, then preserve couplings.
citing papers explorer
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OScaR: The Occam's Razor for Extreme KV Cache Quantization in LLMs and Beyond
OScaR mitigates token norm imbalance via canalized rotation and omni-token scaling to enable near-lossless INT2 KV cache quantization with up to 3x decoding speedup and 5.3x memory reduction.
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Registers Matter for Pixel-Space Diffusion Transformers
Register tokens enhance pixel-space DiT training and output quality via cleaner high-noise feature maps, and a dual-stream design adds further gains with little overhead.
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Priming: Hybrid State Space Models From Pre-trained Transformers
Priming transfers knowledge from pre-trained Transformers to hybrid SSM-attention models, recovering performance with minimal additional tokens and showing Gated KalmaNet outperforming Mamba-2 on long-context reasoning at 32B scale.
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When Does Value-Aware KV Eviction Help? A Fixed-Contract Diagnostic for Non-Monotone Cache Compression
A fixed-contract probe shows value-aware KV eviction recovers needed evidence in 72.6% of accuracy-improving cases on LongBench but only 32.4% otherwise, suggesting an order of recover evidence, rank value, then preserve couplings.