Content area

Abstract

Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) are pioneering advances in many natural language processing tasks, however, their exceptional capabilities are restricted within the preset context window of Transformer. Position Embedding (PE) scaling methods, while effective in extending the context window to a specific length, demonstrate either notable limitations in their extrapolation abilities or sacrificing partial performance within the context window. Length extrapolation methods, although theoretically capable of extending the context window beyond the training sequence length, often underperform in practical long-context applications. To address these challenges, we propose Continuous Length EXtrapolation (CLEX) for LLMs. We generalise the PE scaling approaches to model the continuous dynamics by ordinary differential equations over the length scaling factor, thereby overcoming the constraints of current PE scaling methods designed for specific lengths. Moreover, by extending the dynamics to desired context lengths beyond the training sequence length, CLEX facilitates the length extrapolation with impressive performance in practical tasks. We demonstrate that CLEX can be seamlessly incorporated into LLMs equipped with Rotary Position Embedding, such as LLaMA and GPT-NeoX, with negligible impact on training and inference latency. Experimental results reveal that CLEX can effectively extend the context window to over 4x or almost 8x training length, with no deterioration in performance. Furthermore, when evaluated on the practical LongBench benchmark, our model trained on a 4k length exhibits competitive performance against state-of-the-art open-source models trained on context lengths up to 32k. Our code is available at https://github.com/DAMO-NLP-SG/CLEX.

Details

1009240
Identifier / keyword
Title
CLEX: Continuous Length Extrapolation for Large Language Models
Publication title
arXiv.org; Ithaca
Publication year
2024
Publication date
Mar 24, 2024
Section
Computer Science
Publisher
Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
Source
arXiv.org
Place of publication
Ithaca
Country of publication
United States
University/institution
Cornell University Library arXiv.org
e-ISSN
2331-8422
Source type
Working Paper
Language of publication
English
Document type
Working Paper
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2024-03-26
Milestone dates
2023-10-25 (Submission v1); 2024-03-17 (Submission v2); 2024-03-24 (Submission v3)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
26 Mar 2024
ProQuest document ID
2882110468
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/working-papers/clex-continuous-length-extrapolation-large/docview/2882110468/se-2?accountid=208611
Full text outside of ProQuest
Copyright
© 2024. This work is published under http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2024-03-27
Database
2 databases
  • ProQuest One Academic
  • ProQuest One Academic