Key heads

Checkpoint configuration and implementation moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct @ fd1984e · parameter count checked against the checkpoint’s tensor headers · How to read

61 transformer blocks › 60 MoE blocks › Latent attention › Key heads

Key content up-projection

×

learnedself.kv_b_proj(self.kv_a_layernorm(compressed_kv))

Map the latent to 64 × 128 content key features.

kC=c^KVWUK{\htmlData{light=content-flat content-up}{{\htmlClass{vl-stream-k}{k^{C}}}}}={\htmlData{light=latent}{\hat c^{KV}}}W_{UK}
in
c^KV\hat c^{KV} [B batch, T positions, 512 kv latent]
out
kCk^{C} [B batch, T positions, 8192 heads × content]
parameters
4,194,304 · × 60 MoE blocks = 251,658,240
Parameters

4,194,304 parameters per instance.

Exact per-instance accounting
ComponentCalculationParameters
Weight matrix512×8,192512 \times 8{,}1924,194,304
Per-instance total4,194,304

This projection has no bias parameter.

The reference module holds the weight output by input, [out, in].

Across 60 independent MoE blocks: 4,194,304×60=251,658,2404{,}194{,}304 \times 60 = 251{,}658{,}240 parameters.

Derived from the configured matrix dimensions; the model total matches the checkpoint’s tensors.

Explanation

WUKW_{UK} is output features 0–127 of each head’s 256 in kv_b_proj.

Codemodeling_deepseek.py 662–688, 799–840
modeling_deepseek.py 662–688
            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()
modeling_deepseek.py 799–840
        cos, sin = self.rotary_emb(value_states, seq_len=kv_seq_len)

        q_pe, k_pe = apply_rotary_pos_emb(q_pe, k_pe, cos, sin, position_ids)

        query_states = k_pe.new_empty(bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, self.q_head_dim)
        query_states[:, :, :, : self.qk_nope_head_dim] = q_nope
        query_states[:, :, :, self.qk_nope_head_dim :] = q_pe

        key_states = k_pe.new_empty(bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, self.q_head_dim)
        key_states[:, :, :, : self.qk_nope_head_dim] = k_nope
        key_states[:, :, :, self.qk_nope_head_dim :] = k_pe
        if past_key_value is not None:
            cache_kwargs = {"sin": sin, "cos": cos}  # Specific to RoPE models
            key_states, value_states = past_key_value.update(
                key_states, value_states, self.layer_idx, cache_kwargs
            )

        attn_weights = (
            torch.matmul(query_states, key_states.transpose(2, 3)) * self.softmax_scale
        )

        if attn_weights.size() != (bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, kv_seq_len):
            raise ValueError(
                f"Attention weights should be of size {(bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, kv_seq_len)}, but is"
                f" {attn_weights.size()}"
            )
        assert attention_mask is not None
        if attention_mask is not None:
            if attention_mask.size() != (bsz, 1, q_len, kv_seq_len):
                raise ValueError(
                    f"Attention mask should be of size {(bsz, 1, q_len, kv_seq_len)}, but is {attention_mask.size()}"
                )
            attn_weights = attn_weights + attention_mask

        # upcast attention to fp32
        attn_weights = nn.functional.softmax(
            attn_weights, dim=-1, dtype=torch.float32
        ).to(query_states.dtype)
        attn_weights = nn.functional.dropout(
            attn_weights, p=self.attention_dropout, training=self.training
        )
        attn_output = torch.matmul(attn_weights, value_states)
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

The rotary parts are rotated; each head’s query and key join their non-rotated and rotated parts, the key’s rotated part being the shared rotary key; scores are scaled, masked by the causal mask, normalized and used to mix values.

mla-prefill · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 799–840

Read code excerpt
        cos, sin = self.rotary_emb(value_states, seq_len=kv_seq_len)

        q_pe, k_pe = apply_rotary_pos_emb(q_pe, k_pe, cos, sin, position_ids)

        query_states = k_pe.new_empty(bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, self.q_head_dim)
        query_states[:, :, :, : self.qk_nope_head_dim] = q_nope
        query_states[:, :, :, self.qk_nope_head_dim :] = q_pe

        key_states = k_pe.new_empty(bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, self.q_head_dim)
        key_states[:, :, :, : self.qk_nope_head_dim] = k_nope
        key_states[:, :, :, self.qk_nope_head_dim :] = k_pe
        if past_key_value is not None:
            cache_kwargs = {"sin": sin, "cos": cos}  # Specific to RoPE models
            key_states, value_states = past_key_value.update(
                key_states, value_states, self.layer_idx, cache_kwargs
            )

        attn_weights = (
            torch.matmul(query_states, key_states.transpose(2, 3)) * self.softmax_scale
        )

        if attn_weights.size() != (bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, kv_seq_len):
            raise ValueError(
                f"Attention weights should be of size {(bsz, self.num_heads, q_len, kv_seq_len)}, but is"
                f" {attn_weights.size()}"
            )
        assert attention_mask is not None
        if attention_mask is not None:
            if attention_mask.size() != (bsz, 1, q_len, kv_seq_len):
                raise ValueError(
                    f"Attention mask should be of size {(bsz, 1, q_len, kv_seq_len)}, but is {attention_mask.size()}"
                )
            attn_weights = attn_weights + attention_mask

        # upcast attention to fp32
        attn_weights = nn.functional.softmax(
            attn_weights, dim=-1, dtype=torch.float32
        ).to(query_states.dtype)
        attn_weights = nn.functional.dropout(
            attn_weights, p=self.attention_dropout, training=self.training
        )
        attn_output = torch.matmul(attn_weights, value_states)