EMNLP2025

AnchorAttention: Difference-Aware Sparse Attention with Stripe Granularity

Yu Zhang, Dong Guo, Fang Wu, Guoliang Zhu, Dian Ding, Yiming Zhang

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) with extended context lengths face significant computational challenges during the pre-filling phase, primarily due to the quadratic complexity of selfattention. Existing methods typically employ dynamic pattern matching and block-sparse low-level implementations. However, their reliance on local information for pattern identification fails to capture global contexts, and the coarse granularity of blocks leads to persistent internal sparsity, resulting in subop-