""" brain/model/initialization.py Weight initialization, applied once after the full model is constructed. Uses the GPT-2 / nanoGPT scheme: all Linear/Embedding weights ~ N(0, 0.02), EXCEPT the two projections that write directly back into the residual stream (attention's o_proj, SwiGLU's down_proj), which get an extra 1/sqrt(2 * num_layers) scale-down. Without that scale-down, variance in the residual stream compounds additively over depth (each of the 2*num_layers sublayers adds roughly full-scale noise into the same stream), and a 12-layer model is deep enough for this to visibly destabilize early training. This is a well-established fix (GPT-2, nanoGPT), not a Brain-specific invention. The Brain Trail prototype used plain default PyTorch initialization (Linear's kaiming-uniform default) with no depth-aware scaling at all -- harmless at 2 layers, exactly the kind of thing that stops being harmless at 12. """ from __future__ import annotations import math import torch.nn as nn from brain.model.transformer.attention import CausalSelfAttention from brain.model.transformer.mlp import SwiGLU def init_weights(model: nn.Module, num_layers: int, base_std: float = 0.02) -> None: residual_std = base_std / math.sqrt(2 * num_layers) # Tag the two "writes back into the residual stream" projections so the # generic pass below can single them out, without hardcoding parameter # NAMES (which would silently break if a module gets renamed). residual_write_modules: set[int] = set() for module in model.modules(): if isinstance(module, CausalSelfAttention): residual_write_modules.add(id(module.o_proj)) elif isinstance(module, SwiGLU): residual_write_modules.add(id(module.down_proj)) for module in model.modules(): if isinstance(module, nn.Linear): std = residual_std if id(module) in residual_write_modules else base_std nn.init.normal_(module.weight, mean=0.0, std=std) if module.bias is not None: nn.init.zeros_(module.bias) elif isinstance(module, nn.Embedding): nn.init.normal_(module.weight, mean=0.0, std=base_std) if module.padding_idx is not None: with __import__("torch").no_grad(): module.weight[module.padding_idx].fill_(0.0) # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- if __name__ == "__main__": import torch from brain.core.config import BrainConfig from brain.model.transformer.block import TransformerBlock cfg = BrainConfig(hidden_size=32, num_layers=4, num_heads=4, num_kv_heads=2, intermediate_size=64) blocks = nn.ModuleList([TransformerBlock(cfg) for _ in range(cfg.num_layers)]) init_weights(blocks, num_layers=cfg.num_layers) o_proj_std = blocks[0].attention.o_proj.weight.std().item() q_proj_std = blocks[0].attention.q_proj.weight.std().item() expected_residual_std = 0.02 / math.sqrt(2 * cfg.num_layers) print(f"q_proj (non-residual-write) weight std: {q_proj_std:.4f} (expected ~0.02)") print(f"o_proj (residual-write) weight std: {o_proj_std:.4f} (expected ~{expected_residual_std:.4f})") print(f"o_proj std correctly scaled down: {o_proj_std < q_proj_std}")