Circuit Complexity Bounds for RoPE-based Transformer Architecture

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Chen, Bo, Li, Xiaoyu, Liang, Yingyu, Long, Jiangxuan, Shi, Zhenmei, Song, Zhao
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Chen, Bo
Li, Xiaoyu
Liang, Yingyu
Long, Jiangxuan
Shi, Zhenmei
Song, Zhao
author_facet Chen, Bo
Li, Xiaoyu
Liang, Yingyu
Long, Jiangxuan
Shi, Zhenmei
Song, Zhao
contents Characterizing the express power of the Transformer architecture is critical to understanding its capacity limits and scaling law. Recent works provide the circuit complexity bounds to Transformer-like architecture. On the other hand, Rotary Position Embedding ($\mathsf{RoPE}$) has emerged as a crucial technique in modern large language models, offering superior performance in capturing positional information compared to traditional position embeddings, which shows great potential in application prospects, particularly for the long context scenario. Empirical evidence also suggests that $\mathsf{RoPE}$-based Transformer architectures demonstrate greater generalization capabilities compared to conventional Transformer models. In this work, we establish a circuit complexity bound for Transformers with $\mathsf{RoPE}$ attention. Our key contribution is that we show that unless $\mathsf{TC}^0 = \mathsf{NC}^1$, a $\mathsf{RoPE}$-based Transformer with $\mathrm{poly}(n)$-precision, $O(1)$ layers, hidden dimension $d \leq O(n)$ cannot solve the Arithmetic formula evaluation problem or the Boolean formula value problem. This result significantly demonstrates the fundamental limitation of the expressivity of the $\mathsf{RoPE}$-based Transformer architecture, although it achieves giant empirical success. Our theoretical result not only establishes the complexity bound but also may instruct further work on the $\mathsf{RoPE}$-based Transformer.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_07602
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Circuit Complexity Bounds for RoPE-based Transformer Architecture
Chen, Bo
Li, Xiaoyu
Liang, Yingyu
Long, Jiangxuan
Shi, Zhenmei
Song, Zhao
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Complexity
Computation and Language
Characterizing the express power of the Transformer architecture is critical to understanding its capacity limits and scaling law. Recent works provide the circuit complexity bounds to Transformer-like architecture. On the other hand, Rotary Position Embedding ($\mathsf{RoPE}$) has emerged as a crucial technique in modern large language models, offering superior performance in capturing positional information compared to traditional position embeddings, which shows great potential in application prospects, particularly for the long context scenario. Empirical evidence also suggests that $\mathsf{RoPE}$-based Transformer architectures demonstrate greater generalization capabilities compared to conventional Transformer models. In this work, we establish a circuit complexity bound for Transformers with $\mathsf{RoPE}$ attention. Our key contribution is that we show that unless $\mathsf{TC}^0 = \mathsf{NC}^1$, a $\mathsf{RoPE}$-based Transformer with $\mathrm{poly}(n)$-precision, $O(1)$ layers, hidden dimension $d \leq O(n)$ cannot solve the Arithmetic formula evaluation problem or the Boolean formula value problem. This result significantly demonstrates the fundamental limitation of the expressivity of the $\mathsf{RoPE}$-based Transformer architecture, although it achieves giant empirical success. Our theoretical result not only establishes the complexity bound but also may instruct further work on the $\mathsf{RoPE}$-based Transformer.
title Circuit Complexity Bounds for RoPE-based Transformer Architecture
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Complexity
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.07602