# VASC: Value-Aware Sparse Attention with Cross-Layer Memory for Efficient 3D Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01013 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.01013/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14135/) (2022)
- [Longformer: The Long-Document Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05150/) (2020)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08691/) (2023)
- [Efficient Streaming Language Models with Attention Sinks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17453/) (2023)
- [Big Bird: Transformers for Longer Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14062/) (2020)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [Generating Long Sequences with Sparse Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.10509/) (2019)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [Token Merging: Your ViT But Faster](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09461/) (2022)
- [Grounding Image Matching in 3D with MASt3R](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09756/) (2024)
- [SnapKV: LLM Knows What You are Looking for Before Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14469/) (2024)
- [DynamicViT: Efficient Vision Transformers with Dynamic Token Sparsification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02034/) (2021)
- [H2O: Heavy-Hitter Oracle for Efficient Generative Inference of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14048/) (2023)
- [Continuous 3D Perception Model with Persistent State](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12387/) (2025)
- [Quest: Query-Aware Sparsity for Efficient Long-Context LLM Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10774/) (2024)
- [MInference 1.0: Accelerating Pre-filling for Long-Context LLMs via Dynamic Sparse Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02490/) (2024)
- [Not All Patches are What You Need: Expediting Vision Transformers via Token Reorganizations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.07800/) (2022)
- [π3: Permutation-Equivariant Visual Geometry Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13347/) (2025)
- [Neural RGB-D Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04532/) (2021)
- [3D Reconstruction with Spatial Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16061/) (2024)
- [Streaming 4D Visual Geometry Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.11539/) (2025)
- [TTT3R: 3D Reconstruction as Test-Time Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26645/) (2025)
- [FastVGGT: Training-Free Acceleration of Visual Geometry Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02560/) (2025)
- [Point3R: Streaming 3D Reconstruction with Explicit Spatial Pointer Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02863/) (2025)
- [InfiniteVGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer for Endless Streams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02281/) (2026)
- [IndexCache: Accelerating Sparse Attention via Cross-Layer Index Reuse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12201/) (2026)
- [Block-Sparse Global Attention for Efficient Multi-View Geometry Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07120/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Feed-forward 3D vision models such as VGGT have achieved remarkable progress, unifying camera estimation and dense scene reconstruction in a single pass. However, their quadratic global attention makes long image sequences expensive, while existing sparse methods may favor highly attended yet value-redundant regions. To address these limitations, we introduce VASC, a training-free sparse attention method combining value-aware block selection and execution-aware cross-layer memory. Our value-aware block selection integrates pooled query--key relevance with neighboring value contrast, reducing redundancy while preserving query-relevant and distinctive content. Cross-layer memory tracks unserved demand across layers and updates this state according to actual execution, enabling previously underserved blocks to compete under a fixed computation budget. Experiments on 7Scenes and NeuralRGB-D with VGGT and π3 demonstrate improved pose estimation and reconstruction quality compared with FasterVGGT, together with up to 2.29× faster inference than dense VGGT. Code is available at https://github.com/kosakayamahoo-design/VASC.