# TabNSM: Neural Sparse Mixer for Tabular Regression

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.18026 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18026/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00752/) (2023)
- [Optuna: A Next-generation Hyperparameter Optimization Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10902/) (2019)
- [MiniLM: Deep Self-Attention Distillation for Task-Agnostic Compression of Pre-Trained Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10957/) (2020)
- [Revisiting Deep Learning Models for Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11959/) (2021)
- [TabPFN: A Transformer That Solves Small Tabular Classification Problems in a Second](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01848/) (2022)
- [TabNet: Attentive Interpretable Tabular Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07442/) (2019)
- [Self-Normalizing Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02515/) (2017)
- [Deep Neural Networks and Tabular Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01889/) (2021)
- [TabTransformer: Tabular Data Modeling Using Contextual Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.06678/) (2020)
- [Native Sparse Attention: Hardware-Aligned and Natively Trainable Sparse Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11089/) (2025)
- [DCN V2: Improved Deep & Cross Network and Practical Lessons for Web-scale Learning to Rank Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13535/) (2020)
- [AutoInt: Automatic Feature Interaction Learning via Self-Attentive Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.11921/) (2018)
- [SAINT: Improved Neural Networks for Tabular Data via Row Attention and Contrastive Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01342/) (2021)
- [TabICL: A Tabular Foundation Model for In-Context Learning on Large Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05564/) (2025)
- [TabLLM: Few-shot Classification of Tabular Data with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10723/) (2022)
- [Neural Oblivious Decision Ensembles for Deep Learning on Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06312/) (2019)
- [On Embeddings for Numerical Features in Tabular Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05556/) (2022)
- [Well-tuned Simple Nets Excel on Tabular Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11189/) (2021)
- [TabPFN-2.5: Advancing the State of the Art in Tabular Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08667/) (2025)
- [TabM: Advancing Tabular Deep Learning with Parameter-Efficient Ensembling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24210/) (2024)
- [NGBoost: Natural Gradient Boosting for Probabilistic Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03225/) (2019)
- [Mitra: Mixed Synthetic Priors for Enhancing Tabular Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21204/) (2025)
- [TabR: Tabular Deep Learning Meets Nearest Neighbors in 2023](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.14338/) (2023)
- [Mamba-360: Survey of State Space Models as Transformer Alternative for Long Sequence Modelling: Methods, Applications, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16112/) (2024)
- [DANets: Deep Abstract Networks for Tabular Data Classification and Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02962/) (2021)
- [Gradient Boosting Neural Networks: GrowNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.07971/) (2020)
- [T2G-Former: Organizing Tabular Features into Relation Graphs Promotes Heterogeneous Feature Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.16887/) (2022)
- [SwitchTab: Switched Autoencoders Are Effective Tabular Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02013/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large-scale, high-dimensional tabular regression remains challenging: tree-based models are robust but lack end-to-end representation learning, while deep models enable flexible feature learning but often incur costly interaction modeling and sensitivity to noisy or redundant features. We propose TabNSM, a scalable regression framework that extends our earlier sparse-attention and mixer architectures. At its core, the Adaptive Sparse Interaction Module (ASIM) integrates foreground feature discovery, sparse local interaction encoding, and Feature-Token Mixing, providing near-linear complexity under fixed sparse configurations. For regression, TabNSM introduces three complementary components: a Multi-Stage Regression Head for progressive prediction refinement; GridLoss, an ordinal-aware soft-binning objective that incorporates target structure into representation learning; and RISE (Reweighted Instance Sampling by Error), a difficulty-aware sampling strategy based on loss-quantile bins. Across nine real-world regression benchmarks, TabNSM delivers strong predictive performance and practical scalability, with particularly consistent gains on high-dimensional and heterogeneous datasets. These results demonstrate that selective interaction modeling, structured regression supervision, and difficulty-aware sampling provide an effective and scalable approach to deep tabular regression.