ResearchResearch paperLarge Language Models1 source · Oct 13, 2026

Titan-Llama: Retrofitting Pre-trained LLMs with External Neural Memory Modules

To address this gap, we introduce Titan-Llama, a post-training method for retrofitting attention-based language models with a hierarchical memory architecture that updates parameters at test-time.

Key points

  • Transformers are efficient to pre-train at scale because attention permits parallel computation across sequence positions, but long-context inference requires increasingly large KV caches.
  • Efficient recurrent alternatives reduce the asymptotic complexity of inference, but their sequential dependence limits token-wise parallelism during training, making them harder to scale.
  • Titan-Llama applies a blockwise attention mask and preserves full-fidelity attention over recent tokens while compressing historical context into recurrent, fixed-size neural memory modules (NMMs).
  • Together, these results demonstrate that incorporating memory architecture mechanisms that utilize test-time training effectively modulates long-context behavior of pre-trained models, offering a practical route to adapting pre-trained transformers for efficient long-context inference.

Sources (1)

  • [1]Titan-Llama: Retrofitting Pre-trained LLMs with External Neural Memory Modules
    arXiv (AI, ML, NLP, CV, robotics, multi-agent) · Oct 13, 09:23 PM
    To address this gap, we introduce Titan-Llama, a post-training method for retrofitting attention-based language models with a hierarchical memory architecture that updates parameters at test-time.
    Transformers are efficient to pre-train at scale because attention permits parallel computation across sequence positions, but long-context inference requires increasingly large KV caches.

Extractive summary: sentences quoted from the sources.

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