On Structured State-Space Duality
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arXiv
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| Autores principales: | , , , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866912784508256256 |
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| author | Hu, Jerry Yao-Chieh Zhang, Xiwen ElSheikh, Ali Wu, Weimin Liu, Han |
| author_facet | Hu, Jerry Yao-Chieh Zhang, Xiwen ElSheikh, Ali Wu, Weimin Liu, Han |
| contents | Structured State-Space Duality (SSD) [Dao & Gu, ICML 2024] is an equivalence between a simple Structured State-Space Model (SSM) and a masked attention mechanism. In particular, a state-space model with a scalar-times-identity state matrix is equivalent to a masked self-attention with a $1$-semiseparable causal mask. Consequently, the same sequence transformation (model) has two algorithmic realizations: as a linear-time $O(T)$ recurrence or as a quadratic-time $O(T^2)$ attention. In this note, we formalize and generalize this duality: (i) we extend SSD from the scalar-identity case to general diagonal SSMs (diagonal state matrices); (ii) we show that these diagonal SSMs match the scalar case's training complexity lower bounds while supporting richer dynamics; (iii) we establish a necessary and sufficient condition under which an SSM is equivalent to $1$-semiseparable masked attention; and (iv) we show that such duality fails to extend to standard softmax attention due to rank explosion. Together, these results tighten bridge between recurrent SSMs and Transformers, and widen the design space for expressive yet efficient sequence models. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_04944 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | On Structured State-Space Duality Hu, Jerry Yao-Chieh Zhang, Xiwen ElSheikh, Ali Wu, Weimin Liu, Han Machine Learning Computation and Language Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Structured State-Space Duality (SSD) [Dao & Gu, ICML 2024] is an equivalence between a simple Structured State-Space Model (SSM) and a masked attention mechanism. In particular, a state-space model with a scalar-times-identity state matrix is equivalent to a masked self-attention with a $1$-semiseparable causal mask. Consequently, the same sequence transformation (model) has two algorithmic realizations: as a linear-time $O(T)$ recurrence or as a quadratic-time $O(T^2)$ attention. In this note, we formalize and generalize this duality: (i) we extend SSD from the scalar-identity case to general diagonal SSMs (diagonal state matrices); (ii) we show that these diagonal SSMs match the scalar case's training complexity lower bounds while supporting richer dynamics; (iii) we establish a necessary and sufficient condition under which an SSM is equivalent to $1$-semiseparable masked attention; and (iv) we show that such duality fails to extend to standard softmax attention due to rank explosion. Together, these results tighten bridge between recurrent SSMs and Transformers, and widen the design space for expressive yet efficient sequence models. |
| title | On Structured State-Space Duality |
| topic | Machine Learning Computation and Language Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04944 |