Multi-head latent attention

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

Attention update

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tensorattn_output · 852

The attention update added to the residual stream.

shape
Δattn\Delta_{\mathrm{attn}} [B batch, 1 positions, 7168 d]
Sources

Contextual evidence from Attention residual addition

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

Contextual evidence from Attention residual addition

RMSNorm owns one gain per feature and computes in float32.

rmsnorm · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 94–111

Read code excerpt
class DeepseekV3RMSNorm(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, hidden_size, eps=1e-6):
        """
        DeepseekV3RMSNorm is equivalent to T5LayerNorm
        """
        super().__init__()
        self.weight = nn.Parameter(torch.ones(hidden_size))
        self.variance_epsilon = eps

    def forward(self, hidden_states):
        input_dtype = hidden_states.dtype
        hidden_states = hidden_states.to(torch.float32)
        variance = hidden_states.pow(2).mean(-1, keepdim=True)
        hidden_states = hidden_states * torch.rsqrt(variance + self.variance_epsilon)
        return self.weight * hidden_states.to(input_dtype)


ALL_LAYERNORM_LAYERS.append(DeepseekV3RMSNorm)

Contextual evidence from Causal attention

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)

Contextual evidence from Causal attention

Head outputs are flattened and projected back to the model width.

mla-output · moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct / modeling_deepseek.py
Pinned revision fd1984e2b7a3 ↗ · lines 848–852

Read code excerpt
        attn_output = attn_output.transpose(1, 2).contiguous()

        attn_output = attn_output.reshape(bsz, q_len, self.num_heads * self.v_head_dim)

        attn_output = self.o_proj(attn_output)