Memorizing Transformers
https://openreview.net/forum?id=TrjbxzRcnf-
Architecture with external retrieval memory in the transformer.
Active · Verified 2026-05-14 · fresh as of 2026-05-14 · 23 cited facts, 0 with a third-party source · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Type
- External memory in transformers vendor fix
- Tier
- T3
- Latest release
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- License
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo fix
- Pricing
- not applicable — not commercial fix
- Funding
- not applicable — not commercial fix
- Freshness
- 2026-05-14 fix
- Layer
- agent-infra repo fix
Memory taxonomy
- storage
- kv-cache
- retrieval
- similarity
- persistence
- session
- update
- append-only
- unit
- kv-token
- governance
- n/a
- conflict
- n/a
When to use
Optimised for: not applicable - research paper
Anti-fit: not applicable - research paper
Pros & cons
Pros
kNN external memory layer attached to a transformer — early external-memory architecture.
Cons
Simulation-only; never deployed at scale.
Claims & capabilities
ICLR landmark — established external-memory transformers as a category.
Technical surface
- API surface
- not applicable — research paper
- Backend storage
- not applicable — research paper
- Deployment
- not applicable — not a deployable product
- Embedding model
- not applicable — research paper
- Multi-tenancy
- not applicable — research paper
- MCP
- not applicable — research paper, no deployed product
- A2A
- not applicable — research paper, no deployed product
- OpenTelemetry
- not applicable — research paper, no deployed product
Similar systems
Other recent method papers — theorized, no distinct product in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Compressive Transformer T3
Maintains recent states in full resolution while compressing older memories with learned compression functions. DeepMind.
- MemGPT v2 / agent-tools T3
Already in catalog as the foundational MemGPT paper. Note: Letta is the productionised successor (cross-listed).
- Transformer-XL T3
Extends context through segment-level recurrence + caching of hidden states from prior segments. Foundational long-context architecture.
- Generative Agents T3
Park et al. — landmark agent-simulation paper. Reflection + memory stream + retrieval enable believable agent behavior.
- MemoryBank T3
Enhances LLMs with long-term memory. Early influential paper.
- Reflexion T3
Language agents with verbal reinforcement learning.
Sources (22 cited facts, 0 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is External memory in transformers vendor
- What it does & what's distinct Architecture with external retrieval memory in the transformer. vendor
- Claims / benefits ICLR landmark — established external-memory transformers as a category. vendor
- Modalities text vendor
- Created 2022-03-16 (arxiv 2203.08913 submitted March 16 2022; ICLR 2022 Spotlight) paper
- Mindshare 2 community implementations linked via CatalyzeX from openreview page; no official repo … vendor
- Founders / pedigree Google Brain; Yuhuai Wu Markus Norman Rabe DeLesley Hutchins and Caiming Xiong; ICLR 2022 vendor
- Memory volume / scale no scale claim — research (ICLR 2022) vendor
- Performance ICLR 2022; established external-memory transformers; up to 262K-token external memory te… vendor
- Reproducibility Independently reproduced vendor
- Code/weights release Code partial / pseudocode repo
- Consistency strong vendor
- Versioning immutable append-log vendor
- Tombstoning append-only no delete vendor
- Schema evolution schema locked vendor
- Contradiction handling always append (no resolution) vendor
- Forgetting policy LRU eviction vendor
- Pros kNN external memory layer attached to a transformer — early external-memory architecture. vendor
- Cons Simulation-only; never deployed at scale. vendor
- Project & sources OpenReview (ICLR) vendor
- citation-trajectory [{"year":2023,"cum":5,"infl":0},{"year":2024,"cum":14,"infl":1},{"year":2025,"cum":17,"i… paper
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup agent-infra repo
Related systems
References (1)
- Transformer-XL cites — S2 isInfluential citation
Referenced by (3)
- Infini-attention cites — S2 isInfluential citation
- MemBART cites — S2 isInfluential citation
- Memformers (gradient memory) cites — S2 isInfluential citation