Transformer
Transformers use attention to relate every token to every other. PyTorch ships nn.MultiheadAttention and nn.TransformerEncoderLayer — production-grade blocks you can stack into BERT, GPT, ViT.
Encoder block, attention, classifier
EXAMPLE
import torch
import torch.nn as nn
import torch.nn.functional as F
import math
# 1) Sinusoidal positional encoding (the original Transformer)
class PositionalEncoding(nn.Module):
def __init__(self, d_model: int, max_len: int = 5000):
super().__init__()
pe = torch.zeros(max_len, d_model)
position = torch.arange(0, max_len, dtype=torch.float).unsqueeze(1)
div_term = torch.exp(torch.arange(0, d_model, 2) * -(math.log(10000.0) / d_model))
pe[:, 0::2] = torch.sin(position * div_term)
pe[:, 1::2] = torch.cos(position * div_term)
self.register_buffer('pe', pe)
def forward(self, x): # x: (B, T, D)
return x + self.pe[: x.size(1)]
# 2) Encoder-only classifier (BERT-style)
class TextClassifier(nn.Module):
def __init__(self, vocab_size, num_classes, d_model=256, nhead=8, num_layers=4, dropout=0.1):
super().__init__()
self.embed = nn.Embedding(vocab_size, d_model)
self.pos = PositionalEncoding(d_model)
encoder_layer = nn.TransformerEncoderLayer(
d_model=d_model,
nhead=nhead,
dim_feedforward=4 * d_model,
dropout=dropout,
batch_first=True,
norm_first=True, # pre-LN (better gradient flow)
)
self.encoder = nn.TransformerEncoder(encoder_layer, num_layers=num_layers)
self.classifier = nn.Linear(d_model, num_classes)
def forward(self, ids, pad_mask=None): # ids: (B, T)
x = self.embed(ids) * math.sqrt(self.embed.embedding_dim)
x = self.pos(x)
x = self.encoder(x, src_key_padding_mask=pad_mask)
cls = x[:, 0] # use the first token like BERT's [CLS]
return self.classifier(cls)
model = TextClassifier(vocab_size=30_000, num_classes=4)
print(sum(p.numel() for p in model.parameters()) / 1e6, 'M params')
# 3) Custom self-attention from scratch (for understanding)
class SelfAttention(nn.Module):
def __init__(self, d_model, nhead):
super().__init__()
self.nhead = nhead
self.d_head = d_model // nhead
self.qkv = nn.Linear(d_model, 3 * d_model)
self.out = nn.Linear(d_model, d_model)
def forward(self, x, mask=None): # x: (B, T, D)
B, T, D = x.shape
qkv = self.qkv(x).reshape(B, T, 3, self.nhead, self.d_head).permute(2, 0, 3, 1, 4)
q, k, v = qkv[0], qkv[1], qkv[2] # (B, h, T, d_head)
attn = (q @ k.transpose(-2, -1)) / math.sqrt(self.d_head)
if mask is not None:
attn = attn.masked_fill(mask, float('-inf'))
attn = F.softmax(attn, dim=-1)
out = (attn @ v).transpose(1, 2).reshape(B, T, D)
return self.out(out)
# 4) Causal mask — for decoder/GPT-style models
def causal_mask(t):
return torch.triu(torch.ones(t, t, dtype=torch.bool), diagonal=1)
# Apply: mask = causal_mask(T).to(device)
# 5) Train
optim = torch.optim.AdamW(model.parameters(), lr=3e-4, weight_decay=0.01)
sched = torch.optim.lr_scheduler.CosineAnnealingLR(optim, T_max=epochs)
loss_fn = nn.CrossEntropyLoss(ignore_index=PAD_ID)
scaler = torch.amp.GradScaler('cuda')
for epoch in range(epochs):
for ids, labels, mask in train_dl:
ids, labels, mask = ids.to(device), labels.to(device), mask.to(device)
optim.zero_grad(set_to_none=True)
with torch.amp.autocast('cuda', dtype=torch.bfloat16):
logits = model(ids, pad_mask=mask)
loss = loss_fn(logits, labels)
scaler.scale(loss).backward()
scaler.unscale_(optim)
torch.nn.utils.clip_grad_norm_(model.parameters(), 1.0)
scaler.step(optim); scaler.update()
sched.step()
# 6) FlashAttention via SDPA — PyTorch picks the fastest kernel
# scaled_dot_product_attention dispatches to flash / mem-efficient when available
from torch.nn.functional import scaled_dot_product_attention
out = scaled_dot_product_attention(q, k, v, is_causal=True)
# 7) Real-world
# - For LLMs / NLP, use Hugging Face Transformers (`pip install transformers`)
# - Vision: Vision Transformers via `torchvision.models.vit_b_16(weights=...)`
# - Fine-tune with LoRA / QLoRA (peft) for parameter-efficient training
# 8) Tips
# - batch_first=True everywhere — consistency with most other libraries
# - norm_first=True (pre-LN) trains more stably than post-LN
# - Use scaled_dot_product_attention — automatic flash/efficient backends
# - Pad-token masking critical for variable-length batches
Why it matters
Most real Transformer code today imports from Hugging Face. But knowing the encoder-layer shape (embed → positional → attention → FFN → LN, repeat) is what lets you read papers and modify architectures with confidence.
Tip: Tweak the snippet with Try it Yourself », then sit the quiz at the bottom of the page.
Example
Example
import torch.nn as nn block = nn.TransformerEncoderLayer(d_model=512, nhead=8, dim_feedforward=2048, batch_first=True) enc = nn.TransformerEncoder(block, num_layers=6)Try it Yourself »
Discussion
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