Selective state spacesParallel scan kernelsHybrid SSM-attention stacksRecall vs throughput tradeoffs
State-Space Models: Subquadratic Alternatives to Attention
1 min readLearnJul 17, 2026
Key Takeaway for Students
Selective SSMs (Mamba-family) replace attention with input-dependent recurrences computed via parallel scans, giving O(n) sequence scaling. Hybrid stacks interleave SSM and attention layers to recover in-context recall.
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Selective SSMs (Mamba-family) replace attention with input-dependent recurrences computed via parallel scans, giving O(n) sequence scaling. Hybrid stacks interleave SSM and attention layers to recover in-context recall.