DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp · Hadamard rotation

61 transformer blocks › 58 MoE blocks › Sparse latent attention › Lightning indexer › Indexer key

Hadamard rotation

no parametersrotate_activation(k)

Mix the 128 features with a scaled Hadamard transform.

{\htmlData{light=output hadamard}{\bar {\htmlClass{vl-stream-k}{k^{I}}}}}={\htmlData{light=rotated rotate}{\tilde {\htmlClass{vl-stream-k}{k^{I}}}}}\,\tfrac{1}{\sqrt{128}}\mathbf{H}_{128}

in: $\tilde k^{I}$ [B batch, 1 position, 128 index d_h]
out: $\bar k^{I}$ [B batch, 1 position, 128 index d_h]

Followed by FP8 quantization of queries and keys in groups of 128 features (model.py 474–475).

Explanation

The transform is orthonormal, so products between queries and keys are unchanged.

Spreading outlying features across all coordinates keeps the FP8 quantization error small.

Codemodel.py 428–432, 457–487

model.py 428–432

def rotate_activation(x: torch.Tensor) -> torch.Tensor:
    assert x.dtype == torch.bfloat16
    from fast_hadamard_transform import hadamard_transform
    hidden_size = x.size(-1)
    return hadamard_transform(x, scale=hidden_size ** -0.5)

model.py 457–487

    def forward(self, x: torch.Tensor, qr: torch.Tensor, start_pos: int, freqs_cis: torch.Tensor, mask: Optional[torch.Tensor]):
        bsz, seqlen, _ = x.size()
        end_pos = start_pos + seqlen
        q = self.wq_b(qr)
        q = q.view(bsz, seqlen, self.n_heads, self.head_dim)
        q_pe, q_nope = torch.split(q, [self.rope_head_dim, self.head_dim - self.rope_head_dim], dim=-1)
        # rope in indexer is not interleaved
        q_pe = apply_rotary_emb(q_pe, freqs_cis, False)
        q = torch.cat([q_pe, q_nope], dim=-1)
        k = self.wk(x)
        k = self.k_norm(k)
        k_pe, k_nope = torch.split(k, [self.rope_head_dim, self.head_dim - self.rope_head_dim], dim=-1)
        # rope in indexer is not interleaved
        k_pe = apply_rotary_emb(k_pe.unsqueeze(2), freqs_cis, False).squeeze(2)
        k = torch.cat([k_pe, k_nope], dim=-1)
        q = rotate_activation(q)
        k = rotate_activation(k)
        q_fp8, q_scale = act_quant(q, block_size, self.scale_fmt)
        k_fp8, k_scale = act_quant(k, block_size, self.scale_fmt)
        self.k_cache[:bsz, start_pos:end_pos] = k_fp8
        self.k_scale_cache[:bsz, start_pos:end_pos] = k_scale
        weights = self.weights_proj(x.float()) * self.n_heads ** -0.5
        weights = weights.unsqueeze(-1) * q_scale * self.softmax_scale
        index_score = fp8_index(q_fp8.contiguous(), weights, self.k_cache[:bsz, :end_pos].contiguous(), self.k_scale_cache[:bsz, :end_pos].contiguous())
        if mask is not None:
            index_score += mask
        topk_indices = index_score.topk(min(self.index_topk, end_pos), dim=-1)[1]
        topk_indices_ = topk_indices.clone()
        dist.broadcast(topk_indices_, src=0)
        assert torch.all(topk_indices == topk_indices_), f"{topk_indices=} {topk_indices_=}"
        return topk_indices

Sources2

Direct evidence

The indexer rotates its queries and keys with a scaled Hadamard transform before quantizing them.

hadamard · deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp / inference/model.py
Pinned revision 87e509a2e5a1 ↗ · lines 428–432

Read code excerpt

def rotate_activation(x: torch.Tensor) -> torch.Tensor:
    assert x.dtype == torch.bfloat16
    from fast_hadamard_transform import hadamard_transform
    hidden_size = x.size(-1)
    return hadamard_transform(x, scale=hidden_size ** -0.5)

Direct evidence

Indexer scores combine per-head query–key products with learned per-head weights, add the causal mask and keep the top-k positions for each query.

indexer-forward · deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp / inference/model.py
Pinned revision 87e509a2e5a1 ↗ · lines 457–487

Read code excerpt

    def forward(self, x: torch.Tensor, qr: torch.Tensor, start_pos: int, freqs_cis: torch.Tensor, mask: Optional[torch.Tensor]):
        bsz, seqlen, _ = x.size()
        end_pos = start_pos + seqlen
        q = self.wq_b(qr)
        q = q.view(bsz, seqlen, self.n_heads, self.head_dim)
        q_pe, q_nope = torch.split(q, [self.rope_head_dim, self.head_dim - self.rope_head_dim], dim=-1)
        # rope in indexer is not interleaved
        q_pe = apply_rotary_emb(q_pe, freqs_cis, False)
        q = torch.cat([q_pe, q_nope], dim=-1)
        k = self.wk(x)
        k = self.k_norm(k)
        k_pe, k_nope = torch.split(k, [self.rope_head_dim, self.head_dim - self.rope_head_dim], dim=-1)
        # rope in indexer is not interleaved
        k_pe = apply_rotary_emb(k_pe.unsqueeze(2), freqs_cis, False).squeeze(2)
        k = torch.cat([k_pe, k_nope], dim=-1)
        q = rotate_activation(q)
        k = rotate_activation(k)
        q_fp8, q_scale = act_quant(q, block_size, self.scale_fmt)
        k_fp8, k_scale = act_quant(k, block_size, self.scale_fmt)
        self.k_cache[:bsz, start_pos:end_pos] = k_fp8
        self.k_scale_cache[:bsz, start_pos:end_pos] = k_scale
        weights = self.weights_proj(x.float()) * self.n_heads ** -0.5
        weights = weights.unsqueeze(-1) * q_scale * self.softmax_scale
        index_score = fp8_index(q_fp8.contiguous(), weights, self.k_cache[:bsz, :end_pos].contiguous(), self.k_scale_cache[:bsz, :end_pos].contiguous())
        if mask is not None:
            index_score += mask
        topk_indices = index_score.topk(min(self.index_topk, end_pos), dim=-1)[1]
        topk_indices_ = topk_indices.clone()
        dist.broadcast(topk_indices_, src=0)
        assert torch.all(topk_indices == topk_indices_), f"{topk_indices=} {topk_indices_=}"
        return topk_indices