---
license: apache-2.0
base_model: meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B
tags:
- sequence-compression
- kv-cache
- long-context
- efficiency
metrics:
- perplexity
---



![cell_vs_llama](https://cdn-uploads.huggingface.co/production/uploads/6891bed1f76477f415c0eaa6/yA9h2Pjb3ysk8M27Eg91d.png)


# IronCell — Mark 1: Technical Brief

**GitHub Repository:** [gaoang1111/IronMan](https://github.com/gaoang1111/IronMan)  
**Checkpoints:** [HuggingFace - IronCell-Mark-1](https://huggingface.co/ddddamn/IronCell-Mark-1)  
**Training Logs:** [WandB Overview](https://wandb.ai/gaoang001111-none/IronMan/overview)

---

## Core Efficiency Metrics

| Metric | Value / Performance |
| :--- | :--- |
| **VRAM Footprint** | **Reduced by 93.75%** (Requirement down to 6.25%) |
| **Logic Integrity (PPL)** | **11.20** (FineWeb Zero-Overlap) |
| **Baseline (Llama 3.1 8B)** | 7.40 PPL |

> **The Verdict:** This represents a marginal increase in perplexity exchanged for an impossible context capacity on consumer-grade GPUs.

---

## Cellular Differentiation Theory

The project views a pre-trained LLM as a powerful but rigid "state machine" and treats the homologous base (Llama 3.1 8B) as a "stem cell". Through induced functional differentiation, the model is split into collaborating units:

* **Compressor (`cmp`):** Specialized in distilling raw text chunks into dense semantic latent vectors.
* **Generator (`gen`):** A causal language model trained to reconstruct and reason based on these compressed vectors.
* **Projector (`proj`):** A linear mapping that translates compressor hidden states into the generator's hidden space.

---

## Zipper Layout (Masked Parallel Training)

To achieve **16:1** sequence compression, IronCell utilizes a "control chain + raw chunks" layout:

1.  **Structural Chain:** Formatted as `[<bos>][<soc>] V-1 [<eoc>] V0 [<eoc>] V1 [<eoc>] ... [Raw_Token chunks]`
2.  **Zipper (Staircase) Mask:** A custom attention mask ensures each raw segment only attends to its permitted control tokens, maintaining causal integrity without information leakage.

---

## Training & Reproducibility

The entire differentiation process is reproducible in an afternoon (**~5 hours**) using an **8×A800** node.

### Phase 1: Alignment
* **Objective:** Only the projector and new special tokens are trained.
* **Performance:** Aligns the compressed signal as loss dropped from 12.8 to 4.12 in ~20 steps.

### Phase 2: Differentiation
* **Objective:** Model weights are unfrozen with **L2 regularization**.
* **Performance:** Resulting in a steady eval loss decline from 2.72 to 2.41.

---

## Data Specifications

* **Source:** FineWeb-Edu (HuggingFace).
* **Scale:** Phase 2 uses 10,000 samples.
* **Length:** Individual string lengths ranging from 10k to 30k characters.
* **Protocol:** A **zero-overlap** sampling strategy was maintained within the first 150 training steps.