Query compression

61 transformer blocks › 58 MoE blocks › Sparse latent attention › Query compression

Query latent RMSNorm

×

learnedself.q_norm(self.wq_a(x))

Rescale each position’s features using their root mean square, then apply learned gain.

m2(x)=1d∑j=1dxj2y=γQ⊙xm2(x)+εε=10−6\begin{aligned}m_2(x)&=\frac{1}{d}\sum_{j=1}^d x_j^2\\y&=\gamma_{{\htmlClass{vl-stream-q}{Q}}}\odot\frac{x}{\sqrt{m_2(x)+\varepsilon}}\\\varepsilon&=10^{-6}\end{aligned}
in
cQc^{Q} [B batch, 1 position, 1536 q latent]
out
c^Q\hat c^{Q} [B batch, 1 position, 1536 q latent]
parameters
1,536 · × 58 MoE blocks = 89,088

Normalized in float32, multiplied by the gain in float32, then cast back to the input type (model.py 296–301).

Parameters

1,536 parameters per instance.

Exact per-instance accounting
ComponentCalculationParameters
Learned gain1,5361{,}5361,536
Per-instance total1,536

Each normalization instance owns its learned gain vector.

Across 58 independent MoE blocks: 1,536×58=89,0881{,}536 \times 58 = 89{,}088 parameters.

Derived from the configured feature width; checkpoint tensors have not been independently counted.

Codemodel.py 280–564
model.py 280–306
    def __init__(self, dim: int, eps: float = 1e-6):
        super().__init__()
        self.dim = dim
        self.eps = eps
        self.weight = nn.Parameter(torch.ones(dim, dtype=torch.float32))

    def forward(self, x: torch.Tensor, residual: Optional[torch.Tensor] = None):
        """
        Forward pass for RMSNorm.

        Args:
            x (torch.Tensor): Input tensor.

        Returns:
            torch.Tensor: Normalized tensor with the same shape as input.
        """
        dtype = x.dtype
        if residual is None:
            x = x.float()
            var = x.pow(2).mean(-1, keepdim=True)
            x = x * torch.rsqrt(var + self.eps)
            return (self.weight * x).to(dtype)
        else:
            x = residual = x.float() + residual.float()
            var = x.pow(2).mean(-1, keepdim=True)
            x = x * torch.rsqrt(var + self.eps)
            return (self.weight * x).to(dtype), residual.to(dtype)
model.py 523–539
        self.qk_head_dim = args.qk_nope_head_dim + args.qk_rope_head_dim
        self.v_head_dim = args.v_head_dim

        self.wq_a = Linear(self.dim, self.q_lora_rank)
        self.q_norm = RMSNorm(self.q_lora_rank)
        self.wq_b = ColumnParallelLinear(self.q_lora_rank, self.n_heads * self.qk_head_dim)
        self.wkv_a = Linear(self.dim, self.kv_lora_rank + self.qk_rope_head_dim)
        self.kv_norm = RMSNorm(self.kv_lora_rank)
        self.wkv_b = ColumnParallelLinear(self.kv_lora_rank, self.n_heads * (self.qk_nope_head_dim + self.v_head_dim))
        self.wo = RowParallelLinear(self.n_heads * self.v_head_dim, self.dim)
        self.softmax_scale = self.qk_head_dim ** -0.5
        self.scale_fmt = args.scale_fmt
        if args.max_seq_len > args.original_seq_len:
            mscale = 0.1 * args.mscale * math.log(args.rope_factor) + 1.0
            self.softmax_scale = self.softmax_scale * mscale * mscale

        self.indexer = Indexer(args)
model.py 560–564
        qr = self.q_norm(self.wq_a(x))
        q = self.wq_b(qr)
        q = q.view(bsz, seqlen, self.n_local_heads, self.qk_head_dim)
        q_nope, q_pe = torch.split(q, [self.qk_nope_head_dim, self.qk_rope_head_dim], dim=-1)
        q_pe = apply_rotary_emb(q_pe, freqs_cis)
Sources3

Direct evidence

RMSNorm owns one gain per feature and computes in float32; with a residual argument it first adds the residual, fusing the residual addition into the next normalization.

rmsnorm · deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp / inference/model.py
Pinned revision 87e509a2e5a1 ↗ · lines 280–306

Read code excerpt
    def __init__(self, dim: int, eps: float = 1e-6):
        super().__init__()
        self.dim = dim
        self.eps = eps
        self.weight = nn.Parameter(torch.ones(dim, dtype=torch.float32))

    def forward(self, x: torch.Tensor, residual: Optional[torch.Tensor] = None):
        """
        Forward pass for RMSNorm.

        Args:
            x (torch.Tensor): Input tensor.

        Returns:
            torch.Tensor: Normalized tensor with the same shape as input.
        """
        dtype = x.dtype
        if residual is None:
            x = x.float()
            var = x.pow(2).mean(-1, keepdim=True)
            x = x * torch.rsqrt(var + self.eps)
            return (self.weight * x).to(dtype)
        else:
            x = residual = x.float() + residual.float()
            var = x.pow(2).mean(-1, keepdim=True)
            x = x * torch.rsqrt(var + self.eps)
            return (self.weight * x).to(dtype), residual.to(dtype)

Direct evidence

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 · deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp / inference/model.py
Pinned revision 87e509a2e5a1 ↗ · lines 523–539

Read code excerpt
        self.qk_head_dim = args.qk_nope_head_dim + args.qk_rope_head_dim
        self.v_head_dim = args.v_head_dim

        self.wq_a = Linear(self.dim, self.q_lora_rank)
        self.q_norm = RMSNorm(self.q_lora_rank)
        self.wq_b = ColumnParallelLinear(self.q_lora_rank, self.n_heads * self.qk_head_dim)
        self.wkv_a = Linear(self.dim, self.kv_lora_rank + self.qk_rope_head_dim)
        self.kv_norm = RMSNorm(self.kv_lora_rank)
        self.wkv_b = ColumnParallelLinear(self.kv_lora_rank, self.n_heads * (self.qk_nope_head_dim + self.v_head_dim))
        self.wo = RowParallelLinear(self.n_heads * self.v_head_dim, self.dim)
        self.softmax_scale = self.qk_head_dim ** -0.5
        self.scale_fmt = args.scale_fmt
        if args.max_seq_len > args.original_seq_len:
            mscale = 0.1 * args.mscale * math.log(args.rope_factor) + 1.0
            self.softmax_scale = self.softmax_scale * mscale * mscale

        self.indexer = Indexer(args)

Direct evidence

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

mla-queries · deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp / inference/model.py
Pinned revision 87e509a2e5a1 ↗ · lines 560–564

Read code excerpt
        qr = self.q_norm(self.wq_a(x))
        q = self.wq_b(qr)
        q = q.view(bsz, seqlen, self.n_local_heads, self.qk_head_dim)
        q_nope, q_pe = torch.split(q, [self.qk_nope_head_dim, self.qk_rope_head_dim], dim=-1)
        q_pe = apply_rotary_emb(q_pe, freqs_cis)