Flash STU: Fast Spectral Transform Units
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Abstract (arXiv)
Recent advances in state-space model architectures have shown great promise for efficient sequence modeling, but challenges remain in balancing computational efficiency with model expressiveness. We propose the Flash STU architecture, a hybrid model that interleaves spectral state space model layers with sliding window attention, enabling scalability to billions of parameters for language modeling while maintaining a near-linear time complexity. We evaluate the Flash STU and its variants on diverse sequence prediction tasks, including linear dynamical systems, robotics control, and language modeling. We find that, given a fixed parameter budget, the Flash STU architecture consistently outperforms the Transformer and other leading state-space models such as S4 and Mamba-2.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 47 of its 74 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Sep 2024.
Builds on
47 of 74 references.
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 2; 2025: 1; 2026: 4.
7 papers.
- 2024FutureFill: Fast Generation from Convolutional Sequence Modelscited by 7
- 2025Universal Learning of Nonlinear Dynamicscited by 5
- 2024Provable Length Generalization in Sequence Prediction via Spectral Filteringcited by 3
- 2026SFO: Learning PDE Operators via Spectral Filteringcited by 0
- 2026RubiConv -- Efficient Boundary-Respecting Convolutionscited by 0
- 2026Spectral Distillation: From Nonlinear Dynamics to Linear State-Space Modelscited by 0
- 2026Elastic Selective Spectral Hybrids for Train-Once, Export-Many Budgeted Inferencecited by 0
- 2026Elastic Selective Spectral Hybrids for Train-Once, Export-Many Budgeted Inference26 Sep 2026
- 2026Spectral Distillation: From Nonlinear Dynamics to Linear State-Space Models5 Aug 2026
- 2026RubiConv -- Efficient Boundary-Respecting Convolutions8 May 2026
- 2026SFO: Learning PDE Operators via Spectral Filtering23 Jan 2026
- 2025Universal Learning of Nonlinear Dynamics16 Aug 2025
- 2024Provable Length Generalization in Sequence Prediction via Spectral Filtering1 Nov 2024
- 2024FutureFill: Fast Generation from Convolutional Sequence Models2 Oct 2024
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