mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Multiscale Aggregated Hierarchical Attention (MAHA): A Game Theoretic and Optimization Driven Approach to Efficient Contextual Modeling in Large Language Models

arXiv 2512.14925 ↗First posted 16 Dec 2025cs.CLcited by 0

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

The quadratic computational complexity of MultiHead SelfAttention (MHSA) remains a fundamental bottleneck in scaling Large Language Models (LLMs) for longcontext tasks. While sparse and linearized attention mechanisms attempt to mitigate this, they often compromise the representation of global dependencies or fail to capture multiscale semantic granularity effectively. In this paper, we propose Multiscale Aggregated Hierarchical Attention (MAHA), a novel architectural framework that reformulates the attention mechanism through hierarchical decomposition and mathematically rigorous aggregation. Unlike conventional approaches that treat token interactions at a single resolution, MAHA dynamically partitions the input sequence into hierarchical scales via learnable downsampling operators. The core innovation lies in its aggregation strategy: we model the fusion of scalespecific attention matrices as a resource allocation problem, solved via a convex optimization framework or a Nash equilibriumbased gametheoretic approach. This ensures a theoretically optimal balance between local nuance and global context fidelity. Implemented within a hybrid dilatedconvolutional transformer backbone, MAHA utilizes differentiable optimization layers to enable endtoend training. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that MAHA achieves superior scalability; empirical FLOPs analysis confirms an 81% reduction in computational cost at a sequence length of 4096 compared to standard attention. This work bridges the gap between optimization theory and sequence modeling, offering a scalable solution for nextgeneration LLMs.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 13 of its 28 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Dec 2025.

Builds on

13 of 28 references.

References · 13

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2018GLUE: A Multi-Task Benchmark and Analysis Platform for Natural Language Understandingcited by 4,854
  3. 2016SQuAD: 100,000+ Questions for Machine Comprehension of Textcited by 4,115
  4. 2020Longformer: The Long-Document Transformercited by 3,362
  5. 2023A Survey of Large Language Modelscited by 2,537
  6. 2020Big Bird: Transformers for Longer Sequencescited by 1,673
  7. 2020Rethinking Attention with Performerscited by 1,584
  8. 2019Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLPcited by 1,242
  9. 2023A Comprehensive Overview of Large Language Modelscited by 639
  10. 2021Do Long-Range Language Models Actually Use Long-Range Context?cited by 92
  11. 2021HiT: Hierarchical Transformer with Momentum Contrast for Video-Text Retrievalcited by 87
  12. 2022Hierarchically Decomposed Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognitioncited by 85
1 more
  1. 2022Deeply Explain CNN via Hierarchical Decompositioncited by 6

Built on by

Not cited yet.