61 transformer blocks › 1 dense block › Latent attention
learnedself.q_a_layernorm(self.q_a_proj(hidden_states))
Compress each position’s 7,168 features into a 1,536-feature query latent.
Why
Queries pass through a low-rank latent as well; the authors of latent attention say this can reduce activation memory during training. DeepSeek-V3 §2.1.1
- in
- [B batch, T positions, 7168 d]
- out
- [B batch, T positions, 1536 q latent]
- parameters
- 11,011,584
Parameters
11,011,584 parameters per instance, across its learned components
| Component | Calculation | Parameters |
|---|---|---|
| Query down-projection | 11,010,048 | |
| Query latent RMSNorm | 1,536 | |
| Per-instance total | 11,011,584 | |
Across 1 independent dense blocks: parameters.
Derived from the pinned configuration and implementation, and equal to the count of the checkpoint’s tensors read from its safetensors headers (FP8 block scales and stored rotary buffers excluded).
Explanation
Two matrices, 7,168 × 1,536 and 1,536 × 12,288, hold 29,884,416 weights; one 7,168 × 12,288 matrix would hold 88,080,384.
Codemodeling_deepseek.py 662–688, 767–774
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() 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
)Sources2
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 · 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()Direct evidence
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
)