Decoder doesn't cross-attend to encoder KVs — just periodically reads final encoder states

stochasticchasm · x · 2026-09-11

Reading the architecture blog closely, the author notes the CED decoder does not attend to encoder-section KVs across multiple layers — it just periodically reads the final encoder states, which makes sense as those are the richest and follows the original Transformer. It's also not true cross-attention: the self-attention simply has prefilled KVs. The author adds that the team already has a strong stable-RL recipe (batch-invariant kernels, low-precision inference), so data deserves attention now, and predicts value modeling will eventually appear.

Related event: Inference-First Architecture Sparks Debate: FP4 KV Cache and Pure CSA2 Compression in Focus(11 posts)→

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