ModelRefs / Model Architecture — AI Glossary

Model Architecture — AI Glossary

The structural design of a neural network, including layer types, normalization, positional encoding, and attention variant.

Overview

Model architecture choices—decoder-only vs. encoder-decoder, attention variant (MHA/GQA/MQA), normalization (LayerNorm/RMSNorm), activation (SwiGLU/ReLU), positional encoding (RoPE/ALiBi)—determine parameter efficiency, training stability, and inference speed. Architecture is increasingly standardized; differentiation now centers on data curation and scale.

Reference details

Topicarchitecture
Last reviewed2026-06-24

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Frequently asked questions

What is Model Architecture?

The structural design of a neural network, including layer types, normalization, positional encoding, and attention variant.

What concepts are related to Model Architecture?

Closely related concepts include transformer, decoder only, encoder decoder.