Definition
Transformer architecture splitting 40 layers into 20-layer causal encoder + 20-layer decoder. Decoder global KV cache projected from final encoder hidden states rather than per-layer derivation.
Key Points
- Used in deepseek-v41-flash: 8B parameters active during prefill, 16B during decode
- Improves cost efficiency for input-heavy agentic-ai workloads
- Enables smaller active compute during long-context prefill phase