Attention Mechanisms in Transformers: MHA vs MQA vs GQA
This guide explores the core attention variants in modern transformers, focusing on the mechanisms themselves: Multi-Head Attention (MHA), Multi-Query Attention (MQA), and Grouped-Query Attention (GQA). We’ll understand why each exists and their fundamental architectural differences. Quick Overview Self-Attention: Each token looks at other tokens to build contextualized representations Multi-Head Attention (MHA): Multiple independent attention “heads” in parallel; each head has its own Q, K, V projections Multi-Query Attention (MQA): Share Key/Value projections across all query heads; reduces parameters significantly Grouped-Query Attention (GQA): Groups of query heads share K/V projections; balances expressiveness and efficiency 1. Self-Attention Foundations Core Intuition Self-attention is a content-based lookup over the sequence: ...