Blockwise Parallel Transformer for Large Context Models
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Abstract (arXiv)
Transformers have emerged as the cornerstone of state-of-the-art natural language processing models, showcasing exceptional performance across a wide range of AI applications. However, the memory demands posed by the self-attention mechanism and the large feedforward network in Transformers limit their ability to handle long sequences, thereby creating challenges for tasks involving multiple long sequences or long-term dependencies. We present a distinct approach, Blockwise Parallel Transformer (BPT), that leverages blockwise computation of self-attention and feedforward network fusion to minimize memory costs. By processing longer input sequences while maintaining memory efficiency, BPT enables training sequences 32 times longer than vanilla Transformers and up to 4 times longer than previous memory-efficient methods. Extensive experiments on language modeling and reinforcement learning tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of BPT in reducing memory requirements and improving performance.
Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 51 of its 61 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 May 2023.
Builds on
51 of 61 references.
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 4; 2025: 6; 2026: 1.
12 papers.
- 2023Ring Attention with Blockwise Transformers for Near-Infinite Contextcited by 448
- 2024World Model on Million-Length Video And Language With Blockwise RingAttentioncited by 196
- 2025MoBA: Mixture of Block Attention for Long-Context LLMscited by 188
- 2024Kangaroo: A Powerful Video-Language Model Supporting Long-context Video Inputcited by 132
- 2025Rope to Nope and Back Again: A New Hybrid Attention Strategycited by 46
- 2024RetinaGS: Scalable Training for Dense Scene Rendering with Billion-Scale 3D Gaussianscited by 16
- 2025CLIPPER: Compression enables long-context synthetic data generationcited by 9
- 2024CNNSum: Exploring Long-Context Summarization with Large Language Models in Chinese Novelscited by 2
- 2025Hierarchical Balance Packing: Towards Efficient Supervised Fine-tuning for Long-Context LLMcited by 2
- 2025Pause-Tuning for Long-Context Comprehension: A Lightweight Approach to LLM Attention Recalibrationcited by 1
- 2026Kaczmarz Linear Attentioncited by 1
- 2025Hierarchical Sparse Plus Low Rank Compression of LLMcited by 0
- 2026Kaczmarz Linear Attention9 May 2026
- 2025Hierarchical Sparse Plus Low Rank Compression of LLM19 Dec 2025
- 2025Hierarchical Balance Packing: Towards Efficient Supervised Fine-tuning for Long-Context LLM10 Mar 2025
- 2025CLIPPER: Compression enables long-context synthetic data generation20 Feb 2025
- 2025MoBA: Mixture of Block Attention for Long-Context LLMs18 Feb 2025
- 2025Pause-Tuning for Long-Context Comprehension: A Lightweight Approach to LLM Attention Recalibration1 Feb 2025
- 2025Rope to Nope and Back Again: A New Hybrid Attention Strategy30 Jan 2025
- 2024CNNSum: Exploring Long-Context Summarization with Large Language Models in Chinese Novels3 Dec 2024
- 2024Kangaroo: A Powerful Video-Language Model Supporting Long-context Video Input28 Aug 2024
- 2024RetinaGS: Scalable Training for Dense Scene Rendering with Billion-Scale 3D Gaussians17 Jun 2024
- 2024World Model on Million-Length Video And Language With Blockwise RingAttention13 Feb 2024
- 2023Ring Attention with Blockwise Transformers for Near-Infinite Context3 Oct 2023