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arXiv · 2601.23236

YuriiFormer: A Suite of Nesterov-Accelerated Transformers

Aleksandr Zimin·Yury Polyanskiy·Philippe Rigollet
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Abstract

We propose a variational framework that interprets transformer layers as iterations of an optimization algorithm acting on token embeddings. In this view, self-attention implements a gradient step of an interaction energy, while MLP layers correspond to gradient updates of a potential energy. Standard GPT-style transformers emerge as vanilla gradient descent on the resulting composite objective, implemented via Lie--Trotter splitting between these two energy functionals. This perspective enables principled architectural design using classical optimization ideas. As a proof of concept, we introduce a Nesterov-style accelerated transformer that preserves the same attention and MLP oracles. The resulting architecture consistently outperforms a nanoGPT baseline on TinyStories and OpenWebText, demonstrating that optimization-theoretic insights can translate into practical gains.

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BibTeXRIS

Aleksandr Zimin, Yury Polyanskiy, Philippe Rigollet. 2026-01-30. YuriiFormer: A Suite of Nesterov-Accelerated Transformers. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.23236

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