arXiv · 2503.02142
Measuring Intrinsic Dimension of Token Embeddings
Abstract
In this study, we measure the Intrinsic Dimension (ID) of token embedding to estimate the intrinsic dimensions of the manifolds spanned by the representations, so as to evaluate their redundancy quantitatively compared to their extrinsic dimensionality. In detail, (1) we estimate the ID of token embeddings in small-scale language models and also modern large language models, finding that the embedding spaces often reside on lower-dimensional manifolds compared to their extrinsic dimensionality; (2) we measure the ID across various model sizes and observe an increase in redundancy rates as the model scale grows; (3) we measure the dynamics of IDs during the training process, and find a rapid ID drop in the early stages of training. Moreover, (4) when LoRA is applied to the embedding layers, we observe a sudden drop in perplexity around the estimated IDs, suggesting that the ID can serve as a useful guideline for LoRA application.
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
Takuya Kataiwa, Cho Hakaze, Tetsushi Ohki. 2025-03-04. Measuring Intrinsic Dimension of Token Embeddings. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.02142
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.