# Softermax: Hardware/Software Co-Design of an Efficient Softmax for Transformers

@article{Stevens2021SoftermaxHC,
title={Softermax: Hardware/Software Co-Design of an Efficient Softmax for Transformers},
author={Jacob R. Stevens and Rangharajan Venkatesan and Steve Dai and Brucek Khailany and Anand Raghunathan},
journal={2021 58th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC)},
year={2021},
pages={469-474}
}
• Published 16 March 2021
• Computer Science
• 2021 58th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC)
Transformers have transformed the field of natural language processing. Their superior performance is largely attributed to the use of stacked “self-attention” layers, each of which consists of matrix multiplies as well as softmax operations. As a result, unlike other neural networks, the softmax operation accounts for a significant fraction of the total run-time of Transformers. To address this, we propose Softermax, a hardware-friendly softmax design. Softermax consists of base replacement…

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