English

Transformers in Uniform TC$^0$

Computational Complexity 2025-01-06 v2 Formal Languages and Automata Theory Machine Learning

Abstract

Previous work has shown that the languages recognized by average-hard attention transformers (AHATs) and softmax-attention transformers (SMATs) are within the circuit complexity class TC0^0. However, these results assume limited-precision arithmetic: using floating-point numbers with O(log n) bits (where n is the length of the input string), Strobl showed that AHATs can be approximated in L-uniform TC0^0, and Merrill and Sabharwal showed that SMATs can be approximated in DLOGTIME-uniform TC0^0. Here, we improve these results, showing that AHATs with no approximation, SMATs with O(poly(n)) bits of floating-point precision, and SMATs with at most 2O(poly(n))2^{-O(poly(n))} absolute error are all in DLOGTIME-uniform TC0^0.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.13629,
  title  = {Transformers in Uniform TC$^0$},
  author = {David Chiang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.13629},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:51:35.817Z