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Long-Context Attention from Kernel Efficiency to Distributed Context Parallelism (arxiv.org)
1 point by PaulHoule 329 days ago | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: A test suite compares the two ways to speed up attention for long-context training: faster attention code and splitting the work across many GPUs. Tested on up to 96 GPUs across different attention patterns and lengths, it reveals each one's trade-offs and gives practical guidance.

Abstract · Long-Context Attention Benchmark: From Kernel Efficiency to Distributed Context Parallelism

Transformer-based large language models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success, yet their standard attention mechanism incurs quadratic computation and memory costs with respect to sequence length, posing a major bottleneck for long-context training. Prior work tackles this challenge along two directions: (1) kernel-level optimizations, which accelerate dense and sparse attention operators; and (2) module-level strategies, often referred to as distributed attention or context parallel training, which scale attention across multiple devices. However, systematic evaluation still remains limited: operator-level comparisons are often incomplete, while context parallel strategies are typically framework-specific, with unclear performance analysis across contexts. To address these gaps, we propose a unified benchmark that integrates representative attention kernels and context parallel mechanisms with a modular and extensible interface for evaluation. The benchmark evaluates methods along two critical dimensions: (1) attention mask patterns, which strongly affect efficiency, scalability, and usability, and (2) sequence length and distributed scale, which determine performance under extreme long-context training. Through comprehensive experiments on the cluster of up to 96 GPUs, our benchmark enables reproducible comparisons, highlights method-specific trade-offs, and provides practical guidance for designing and deploying attention mechanisms in long-context LLM training.

Tao Bu, Qiangang Wang, Bowen Zeng, Hanwen Sun, Yunpeng Huang, Chun Cao, Jingwei Xu
arXiv:2510.17896 · cs.LG, cs.AI · submitted Oct 19, 2025
abstract · pdf · html · 56 pages

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