Limitations of Normalization in Attention

Timur Mudarisov, Mikhail Burtsev, Tatiana Petrova, Radu State

Keywords: Large Language Models, Theory verification, GPT-2, Attention mechanism, Natural Language Processing

Abstract: This paper investigates the limitations of the normalization in attention mechanisms. We begin with a theoretical framework that enables the identification of the model's selective ability and the geometric separation involved in token selection. Our analysis includes explicit bounds on distances and separation criteria for token vectors under softmax scaling. Through experiments with pre-trained GPT-2 model, we empirically validate our theoretical results and analyze key behaviors of the attention mechanism. Notably, we demonstrate that as the number of selected tokens increases, the model's ability to distinguish informative tokens declines, often converging toward a uniform selection pattern. We also show that gradient sensitivity under softmax normalization presents challenges during training, especially at low temperature settings. These findings advance current understanding of softmax-based attention mechanism and motivate the need for more robust normalization and selection strategies in future attention architectures.

Primary Area: Deep learning (e.g., architectures, generative models, optimization for deep networks, foundation models, LLMs)

Submission Number: 20803