Implement decoder-only GPT-style transformer
Company: Amazon
Role: Machine Learning Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Onsite
### Goal
Implement a simplified **decoder-only Transformer language model** (similar in spirit to GPT) for next-token prediction. The implementation should be modular, using four main classes:
1. `MultiHeadAttention`
2. `FeedForward`
3. `DecoderLayer`
4. `GPT` (the full model)
You may assume a deep learning framework (e.g., PyTorch or TensorFlow), but you should clearly specify tensor shapes and operations.
---
### Model details and requirements
Assume:
- Batch size: `B`
- Sequence length: `T`
- Embedding dimension: `d_model`
- Number of attention heads: `num_heads` (assume `d_model` is divisible by `num_heads`)
- Vocabulary size: `V`
#### 1. Multi-head self-attention (`MultiHeadAttention`)
Implement a class `MultiHeadAttention` that performs **masked self-attention**:
- Inputs:
- `x`: Tensor of shape `(B, T, d_model)` (token embeddings or layer outputs).
- Internally learnable parameters:
- Linear projections to compute queries `Q`, keys `K`, and values `V` for all heads.
- Operations:
1. Project `x` into `Q`, `K`, and `V` with shapes `(B, T, d_model)`.
2. Split them into `num_heads` heads, each of dimension `d_head = d_model / num_heads`.
3. Compute scaled dot-product attention for each head:
\[
\text{Attention}(Q, K, V) = \text{softmax}\left(\frac{QK^\top}{\sqrt{d_{head}}} + M\right)V,
\]
where `M` is a **causal mask** that prevents a position from attending to future positions (positions `> t`).
4. Concatenate the outputs of all heads back to shape `(B, T, d_model)`.
5. Apply a final linear projection to return to `(B, T, d_model)`.
- Output:
- Tensor of shape `(B, T, d_model)`.
Ensure you correctly implement the **causal (autoregressive) mask** so that position `t` can only attend to positions `0..t`.
#### 2. Position-wise feed-forward network (`FeedForward`)
Implement a class `FeedForward` for the position-wise MLP:
- Inputs:
- `x`: Tensor of shape `(B, T, d_model)`.
- Internal structure (typical choice):
- Linear layer from `d_model` to `d_ff` (e.g., `4 * d_model`).
- Non-linear activation (e.g., GELU or ReLU).
- Linear layer from `d_ff` back to `d_model`.
- All operations are applied **independently** to each position in the sequence.
- Output:
- Tensor of shape `(B, T, d_model)`.
#### 3. Decoder layer (`DecoderLayer`)
Implement a single Transformer **decoder block** that combines attention, feed-forward, residual connections, and layer normalization:
- Inputs:
- `x`: Tensor of shape `(B, T, d_model)`.
- Components:
1. LayerNorm `ln1` before self-attention.
2. `MultiHeadAttention` block (masked self-attention).
3. Residual connection: `x = x + attention_output`.
4. LayerNorm `ln2` before feed-forward.
5. `FeedForward` block.
6. Residual connection: `x = x + ff_output`.
- Output:
- Tensor of shape `(B, T, d_model)`.
Your `DecoderLayer` should be reusable so that multiple layers can be stacked.
#### 4. GPT model (`GPT`)
Implement a `GPT` class representing the full decoder-only Transformer:
- Inputs:
- `input_ids`: Integer tensor of shape `(B, T)` representing token indices.
- Components:
1. **Token embedding** layer mapping token IDs to vectors of size `d_model`.
2. **Positional encodings** (learned or fixed) of shape `(T, d_model)` added to the token embeddings.
3. A stack of `N` identical `DecoderLayer` blocks.
4. A final linear layer mapping from `d_model` to vocabulary size `V`.
- Forward pass:
1. Embed tokens, add positional encodings to obtain `(B, T, d_model)`.
2. Pass through the `N` decoder layers sequentially.
3. Apply the final linear layer to obtain logits of shape `(B, T, V)`.
- Output:
- Logits for next-token prediction: `(B, T, V)`.
#### Additional notes
- You should define the `forward` method for each class with correct tensor transformations.
- Be careful about tensor shapes when splitting/combining heads.
- Ensure the causal mask is correctly broadcast and applied in attention.
- You do **not** need to implement training loops or optimization; focus on correct and clean model implementation.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates implementation-level mastery of transformer architectures, including multi-head masked self-attention, position-wise feed-forward networks, residual connections, and precise tensor-shape reasoning for a decoder-only language model, within the Coding & Algorithms domain of deep learning and neural network engineering.
Part 1: Causal Multi-Head Self-Attention Forward Pass
Implement the forward pass of simplified GPT-style multi-head self-attention using nested Python lists instead of a deep learning framework. Given an input tensor x of shape B x T x d_model, projection matrices Wq, Wk, Wv, and Wo, compute causal scaled dot-product self-attention. Heads use contiguous chunks of the projected dimension. Position t may only attend to positions 0 through t. Use a numerically stable softmax and return every numeric value rounded to 6 decimal places.
Constraints
- 0 <= B <= 10
- 0 <= T <= 50
- 1 <= d_model <= 64 when T > 0
- 1 <= num_heads <= d_model
- d_model is divisible by num_heads
- All projection matrices are d_model x d_model
- Input values are finite numbers
Examples
Input: ([], 1, [], [], [], [])
Expected Output: []
Explanation: Empty batch produces an empty output.
Input: ([[[0], [1]]], 1, [[1]], [[1]], [[1]], [[1]])
Expected Output: [[[0], [0.731059]]]
Explanation: The second token attends to values [0, 1] with softmax scores [0, 1].
Hints
- After projection, head h uses dimensions h * d_head through (h + 1) * d_head - 1.
- For each query position t, compute scores only against key positions j <= t; future positions should not appear in the softmax denominator.
Part 2: Position-Wise Feed-Forward Network
Implement the forward pass of the Transformer position-wise feed-forward network using nested lists. For every token vector independently, compute hidden = ReLU(x * W1 + b1), then output = hidden * W2 + b2. The same feed-forward network is applied to each batch item and sequence position.
Constraints
- 0 <= B <= 100
- 0 <= T <= 100
- 1 <= d_model <= 128 when T > 0
- 1 <= d_ff <= 512
- All numeric values are finite
- Use ReLU: ReLU(z) = max(0, z)
Examples
Input: ([[[1, 2]]], [[1, -1, 0], [0, 2, 1]], [0, 1, -3], [[1, 0], [0, 1], [1, 1]], [0, 0])
Expected Output: [[[1, 4]]]
Explanation: The hidden vector is ReLU([1, 4, -1]) = [1, 4, 0].
Input: ([[[2], [-1]]], [[2, -1]], [0, 3], [[1], [-2]], [5])
Expected Output: [[[7], [-3]]]
Explanation: Both sequence positions use the same MLP independently.
Hints
- There is no mixing across sequence positions; process each vector x[b][t] independently.
- Treat each vector as a row vector: output[j] = sum_i hidden[i] * W2[i][j] + b2[j].
Part 3: Pre-Norm Transformer Decoder Layer
Implement one simplified GPT decoder layer. The layer uses pre-layer-normalization, causal multi-head self-attention, residual addition, another layer normalization, a ReLU feed-forward network, and a second residual addition. This problem is framework-free: tensors are nested lists, linear layers have no bias except the feed-forward biases, and LayerNorm is computed over the last dimension. For LayerNorm, use variance without epsilon; if variance is zero, use normalized value 0 for every feature before applying gamma and beta.
Constraints
- 0 <= B <= 10
- 0 <= T <= 50
- 1 <= d_model <= 64 when T > 0
- 1 <= d_ff <= 256
- d_model is divisible by num_heads
- LayerNorm gamma and beta each have length d_model
- Use causal masking inside self-attention
Examples
Input: ([[[1, 3]]], 1, [1, 1], [0, 0], [[0, 0], [0, 0]], [[0, 0], [0, 0]], [[1, 0], [0, 1]], [[1, 0], [0, 1]], [1, 1], [0, 0], [[1, 0], [0, 1]], [0, 0], [[1, 0], [0, 1]], [0, 0])
Expected Output: [[[0, 5]]]
Explanation: LN([1,3]) = [-1,1], attention adds [-1,1], then the feed-forward residual adds [0,1].
Input: ([[[1, 3], [3, 1]]], 1, [1, 1], [0, 0], [[0, 0], [0, 0]], [[0, 0], [0, 0]], [[1, 0], [0, 1]], [[1, 0], [0, 1]], [1, 1], [0, 0], [[0, 0], [0, 0]], [0, 0], [[0, 0], [0, 0]], [0, 0])
Expected Output: [[[0, 4], [3, 1]]]
Explanation: The second position causally averages normalized values from positions 0 and 1; the feed-forward block is zero.
Hints
- This is a pre-norm block: normalize before attention and before the feed-forward network, not after the residual.
- Keep the original x for the first residual: x1 = x + attention(LN1(x)), then output = x1 + feedforward(LN2(x1)).
Part 4: Full GPT-Style Decoder-Only Forward Pass
Implement a simplified full GPT forward pass using nested lists. First add token embeddings and positional embeddings. Then apply N pre-norm decoder layers, each using causal multi-head self-attention and a ReLU feed-forward network. Finally project each hidden vector to vocabulary logits. Layer parameters are provided as parallel arrays indexed by layer number. Return logits rounded to 6 decimals.
Constraints
- 0 <= B <= 10
- 0 <= T <= 50
- 1 <= vocabulary size V <= 500
- 1 <= d_model <= 64 when T > 0
- 0 <= N <= 12
- d_model is divisible by num_heads
- Every input id is in the range [0, V - 1]
- All numeric parameters are finite
Examples
Input: ([[]], [[1, 2], [3, 4]], [], 1, [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [[1, 0], [0, 1]], [0, 0])
Expected Output: [[]]
Explanation: An empty sequence has no logits.
Input: ([[1]], [[1, 0], [0, 2]], [[10, 10]], 1, [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [[1, 0, 1], [0, 1, -1]], [0, 1, 0])
Expected Output: [[[10, 13, -2]]]
Explanation: With no decoder layers, logits are computed directly from token plus positional embedding.
Hints
- The initial hidden state is token_embedding[input_ids[b][t]] + position_embedding[t].
- Apply decoder layers sequentially; the output of layer i becomes the input to layer i + 1.