Kimi K2

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Moonshot AI · Jul 2025
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moonshotai/Kimi‑K2‑Instruct @ fd1984e · parameter count checked against the checkpoint’s tensor headersHow to read

Dense transformer block

61 transformer blocks › 1 dense block

learnedself.mlp

A dense SwiGLU of 18,432 hidden features, used in the first block.

h=a⊙uh=a\odot u
Δffn=hW2\Delta_{\mathrm{ffn}}=hW_{2}
All 5 steps
g=xffnW1g=x_{\mathrm{ffn}}W_{1}
u=xffnW3u=x_{\mathrm{ffn}}W_{3}
a=g σ(g)a=g\,\sigma(g)
h=a⊙uh=a\odot u
Δffn=hW2\Delta_{\mathrm{ffn}}=hW_{2}
in
xffnx_{\mathrm{ffn}} [B batch, T positions, 7168 d]
out
Δffn\Delta_{\mathrm{ffn}} [B batch, T positions, 7168 d]
parameters
396,361,728
Parameters

396,361,728 parameters per instance, across its learned components

Exact per-instance accounting
ComponentCalculationParameters
Gate projection7,168×18,4327{,}168 \times 18{,}432132,120,576
Up projection7,168×18,4327{,}168 \times 18{,}432132,120,576
Down projection18,432×7,16818{,}432 \times 7{,}168132,120,576
Per-instance total396,361,728

Across 1 independent dense blocks: 396,361,728×1=396,361,728396{,}361{,}728 \times 1 = 396{,}361{,}728 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

The first block uses this dense MLP; the other 60 replace it with the mixture of experts.

Codemodeling_deepseek.py 374–1218
modeling_deepseek.py 374–390
class DeepseekV3MLP(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, config, hidden_size=None, intermediate_size=None):
        super().__init__()
        self.config = config
        self.hidden_size = config.hidden_size if hidden_size is None else hidden_size
        self.intermediate_size = (
            config.intermediate_size if intermediate_size is None else intermediate_size
        )

        self.gate_proj = nn.Linear(self.hidden_size, self.intermediate_size, bias=False)
        self.up_proj = nn.Linear(self.hidden_size, self.intermediate_size, bias=False)
        self.down_proj = nn.Linear(self.intermediate_size, self.hidden_size, bias=False)
        self.act_fn = ACT2FN[config.hidden_act]

    def forward(self, x):
        down_proj = self.down_proj(self.act_fn(self.gate_proj(x)) * self.up_proj(x))
        return down_proj
modeling_deepseek.py 1152–1166
        self.mlp = (
            DeepseekV3MoE(config)
            if (
                config.n_routed_experts is not None
                and layer_idx >= config.first_k_dense_replace
                and layer_idx % config.moe_layer_freq == 0
            )
            else DeepseekV3MLP(config)
        )
        self.input_layernorm = DeepseekV3RMSNorm(
            config.hidden_size, eps=config.rms_norm_eps
        )
        self.post_attention_layernorm = DeepseekV3RMSNorm(
            config.hidden_size, eps=config.rms_norm_eps
        )
modeling_deepseek.py 1198–1218
        residual = hidden_states

        hidden_states = self.input_layernorm(hidden_states)

        # Self Attention
        hidden_states, self_attn_weights, present_key_value = self.self_attn(
            hidden_states=hidden_states,
            attention_mask=attention_mask,
            position_ids=position_ids,
            past_key_value=past_key_value,
            output_attentions=output_attentions,
            use_cache=use_cache,
            **kwargs,
        )
        hidden_states = residual + hidden_states

        # Fully Connected
        residual = hidden_states
        hidden_states = self.post_attention_layernorm(hidden_states)
        hidden_states = self.mlp(hidden_states)
        hidden_states = residual + hidden_states
Sources2

Direct evidence

The dense feed-forward network is a SwiGLU MLP: down(silu(gate x) ⊙ up x).

mlp · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 374–390

Read code excerpt
class DeepseekV3MLP(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, config, hidden_size=None, intermediate_size=None):
        super().__init__()
        self.config = config
        self.hidden_size = config.hidden_size if hidden_size is None else hidden_size
        self.intermediate_size = (
            config.intermediate_size if intermediate_size is None else intermediate_size
        )

        self.gate_proj = nn.Linear(self.hidden_size, self.intermediate_size, bias=False)
        self.up_proj = nn.Linear(self.hidden_size, self.intermediate_size, bias=False)
        self.down_proj = nn.Linear(self.intermediate_size, self.hidden_size, bias=False)
        self.act_fn = ACT2FN[config.hidden_act]

    def forward(self, x):
        down_proj = self.down_proj(self.act_fn(self.gate_proj(x)) * self.up_proj(x))
        return down_proj

Direct evidence

A block applies input RMSNorm, attention and a residual addition, then post-attention RMSNorm, the FFN and a second residual addition; the first first_k_dense_replace blocks use the dense MLP, the rest MoE.

block · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 1152–1218

Read code excerpt
        self.mlp = (
            DeepseekV3MoE(config)
            if (
                config.n_routed_experts is not None
                and layer_idx >= config.first_k_dense_replace
                and layer_idx % config.moe_layer_freq == 0
            )
            else DeepseekV3MLP(config)
        )
        self.input_layernorm = DeepseekV3RMSNorm(
            config.hidden_size, eps=config.rms_norm_eps
        )
        self.post_attention_layernorm = DeepseekV3RMSNorm(
            config.hidden_size, eps=config.rms_norm_eps
        )

… lines 1167–1197 omitted …

        residual = hidden_states

        hidden_states = self.input_layernorm(hidden_states)

        # Self Attention
        hidden_states, self_attn_weights, present_key_value = self.self_attn(
            hidden_states=hidden_states,
            attention_mask=attention_mask,
            position_ids=position_ids,
            past_key_value=past_key_value,
            output_attentions=output_attentions,
            use_cache=use_cache,
            **kwargs,
        )
        hidden_states = residual + hidden_states

        # Fully Connected
        residual = hidden_states
        hidden_states = self.post_attention_layernorm(hidden_states)
        hidden_states = self.mlp(hidden_states)
        hidden_states = residual + hidden_states