Numerical Error Analysis of Large Language Models
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2503.10251v1
- Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2025 10:53:17 GMT
- Title: Numerical Error Analysis of Large Language Models
- Authors: Stanislav Budzinskiy, Wenyi Fang, Longbin Zeng, Philipp Petersen,
- Abstract summary: We provide a theoretical analysis of the impact of round-off errors within the forward pass of a transformer architecture.<n>We also conduct a series of numerical experiments which demonstrate the practical relevance of our bounds.
- Score: 0.562479170374811
- License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Abstract: Large language models based on transformer architectures have become integral to state-of-the-art natural language processing applications. However, their training remains computationally expensive and exhibits instabilities, some of which are expected to be caused by finite-precision computations. We provide a theoretical analysis of the impact of round-off errors within the forward pass of a transformer architecture which yields fundamental bounds for these effects. In addition, we conduct a series of numerical experiments which demonstrate the practical relevance of our bounds. Our results yield concrete guidelines for choosing hyperparameters that mitigate round-off errors, leading to more robust and stable inference.
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