# HLA-WM: Hybrid Linear Attention for Long-Horizon Video World Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.05739 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05739/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video-generation world models and simulators, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 25 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Oct 2026.

## Placed in

- World models / [Video-generation world models and simulators](https://mlsanity.com/wm/video-generation-world-models-and-simulators/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Transformers are RNNs: Fast Autoregressive Transformers with Linear Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16236/) (2020)
- [World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10122/) (2018)
- [Gated Delta Networks: Improving Mamba2 with Delta Rule](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06464/) (2024)
- [Gated Linear Attention Transformers with Hardware-Efficient Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06635/) (2023)
- [Linear Transformers Are Secretly Fast Weight Programmers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.11174/) (2021)
- [Parallelizing Linear Transformers with the Delta Rule over Sequence Length](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06484/) (2024)
- [π3: Permutation-Equivariant Visual Geometry Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13347/) (2025)
- [LongLive: Real-time Interactive Long Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22622/) (2025)
- [Matrix-game 2.0: An open-source real-time and streaming interactive world model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13009/) (2025)
- [WorldMem: Long-term Consistent World Simulation with Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12369/) (2025)
- [Context as Memory: Scene-Consistent Interactive Long Video Generation with Memory Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03141/) (2025)
- [Video World Models with Long-term Spatial Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05284/) (2025)
- [Matrix-Game 3.0: Real-Time and Streaming Interactive World Model with Long-Horizon Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08995/) (2026)
- [RELIC: Interactive Video World Model with Long-Horizon Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04040/) (2025)
- [Yume: An Interactive World Generation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17744/) (2025)
- [SANA-WM: Efficient Minute-Scale World Modeling with Hybrid Linear Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15178/) (2026)
- [Astra: General Interactive World Model with Autoregressive Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08931/) (2025)
- [Fast Autoregressive Video Diffusion and World Models with Temporal Cache Compression and Sparse Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01801/) (2026)
- [MBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark on Memory Capability for Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00793/) (2026)
- [Addressable Memory for Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07408/) (2026)
- [Geometry-Aware Implicit Memory for Video World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02436/) (2026)
- [AlayaWorld: Interactive Long-Horizon World Modeling -- Full Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.18367/) (2026)
- [VideoMLA: Low-Rank Latent KV Cache for Minute-Scale Autoregressive Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30351/) (2026)
- [Attend Locally, Remember Linearly: Linear Attention as Cross-Frame Memory for Autoregressive Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16579/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Long-horizon video world models require persistent memory to preserve scene consistency over extended rollouts. Softmax attention retains the full generation history through a growing KV cache, whereas recurrent linear attention compresses history into fixed-size states with substantially lower memory cost. However, we identify severe long-range forgetting in Gated DeltaNet (GDN), where information from distant but relevant scenes is progressively attenuated by subsequent state updates. To address this limitation, we propose HLA-WM, a training-free hybrid linear-attention framework that combines coarse-grained geometry-guided retrieval with fine-grained recurrent linear-state computation. HLA-WM exploits the affine structure of GDN to cache compact chunk-wise transition summaries, retrieve scene-relevant historical chunks using camera geometry, and recompose them into query-specific recurrent states. On the 60-second SANA-WM-Bench, HLA-WM improves all six aggregate revisit-consistency and camera-control metrics of the base autoregressive generator without additional training, including a 0.74 dB PSNR gain and a 28.5% reduction in rotation error. The improvements persist after downstream refinement and generalize to MBench-A, where HLA-WM consistently improves all three revisit-consistency metrics across all four subsets and all evaluated inference modes over 547 samples. At a 60-second context, HLA-WM reduces historical-state memory by 12× relative to full KV caching while incurring at most a 1.6% reduction in inference throughput. These results demonstrate that selectively addressable recurrent memory can improve long-range scene recall while preserving the efficiency advantages of GDN. Project page: https://caesarhhh.github.io/hla-wm/