Attention (machine learning)

Why do we sometimes zoom in faster on a scene?

Attention (machine learning)

Why do we sometimes zoom in faster on a scene?

Imagine you're watching a movie and suddenly a character you love appears on screen. You want to focus on them quickly to enjoy the moment.

Think of your eyes as a camera that can zoom in on different parts of the scene. Instead of moving slowly to focus on the character, your eyes can quickly scan the entire scene and instantly zoom in on the character, like a camera with a fast zoom feature.

Example

In the movie, your eyes quickly scan the entire scene (a 1920x1080 image) and zoom in on the character (a 32x32 pixel region) in less than a second.

Remember this

This is why flash attention is faster—it quickly scans the entire scene and zooms in on important parts, avoiding the need to build a large matrix to focus on every detail.

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