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CliffordNet: All You Need Is Geometric Algebra[ArXiv:2601.06793] (arxiv.org)
2 points by unprovable 65 days ago | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: A vision network built from one geometric-algebra operation that blends how features agree and how they differ, replacing the usual separate mixing layers and feed-forward blocks. It matched ResNet-18's image accuracy using eight times fewer parameters.

Abstract · CliffordNet: All You Need is Geometric Algebra

Modern computer vision architectures, from CNNs to Transformers, predominantly rely on the stacking of heuristic modules: spatial mixers (Attention/Conv) followed by channel mixers (FFNs). In this work, we challenge this paradigm by returning to mathematical first principles. We propose the Clifford Algebra Network (CAN), also referred to as CliffordNet, a vision backbone grounded purely in Geometric Algebra. Instead of engineering separate modules for mixing and memory, we derive a unified interaction mechanism based on the Clifford Geometric Product ($uv = u \cdot v + u \wedge v$). This operation ensures algebraic completeness regarding the Geometric Product by simultaneously capturing feature coherence (via the generalized inner product) and structural variation (via the exterior wedge product). Implemented via an efficient sparse rolling mechanism with strict linear complexity $O(N)$, our model reveals a surprising emergent property: the geometric interaction is so representationally dense that standard Feed-Forward Networks (FFNs) become redundant. Empirically, CliffordNet establishes a new Pareto frontier: our Nano variant achieves 77.82\% accuracy on CIFAR-100 with only 1.4M parameters, effectively matching the heavy-weight ResNet-18 (11.2M) with $8\times$ fewer parameters, while our Lite variant (2.6M) sets a new SOTA for tiny models at 79.05\%. Our results suggest that global understanding can emerge solely from rigorous, algebraically complete local interactions, potentially signaling a shift where geometry is all you need. Code is available at https://github.com/ParaMind2025/CAN.

Zhongping Ji
arXiv:2601.06793 · cs.CV, cs.LG · submitted Jan 11, 2026 · updated Feb 15, 2026
abstract · pdf · html · 16 pages

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