--- title: The Heart of an LLM: Attention Mechanism in Elixir description: A hands-on walkthrough of implementing LLM attention mechanisms in Elixir using the Nx and Axon libraries, based on Sebastian Raschka's 'Build a LLM from... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-heart-of-an-llm-attention-mechanism-in-elixir-jdpdw1rdb twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Heart of an LLM: Attention Mechanism in Elixir | daily.dev og:description: A hands-on walkthrough of implementing LLM attention mechanisms in Elixir using the Nx and Axon libraries, based on Sebastian Raschka's 'Build a LLM from... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-heart-of-an-llm-attention-mechanism-in-elixir-jdpdw1rdb og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/JdPDW1rDB.png og:image:alt: The Heart of an LLM: Attention Mechanism in Elixir og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Heart of an LLM: Attention Mechanism in Elixir **[ElixirStatus](https://daily.dev/sources/elixirstatus)** · 52 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A hands-on walkthrough of implementing LLM attention mechanisms in Elixir using the Nx and Axon libraries, based on Sebastian Raschka's 'Build a LLM from Scratch'. Covers four progressively complex variants: simplified self-attention (no trainable weights), self-attention with trainable weight matrices (V1 uniform init, V2 Axon dense init), causal attention with upper-triangle masking using negative infinity, and dropout regularization. All concepts are demonstrated with working Elixir test code including tensor shapes, dot products, softmax normalization, and context vector computation. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Attention Mechanisms in LLMs, clearly explained](https://daily.dev/posts/attention-mechanisms-in-llms-clearly-explained-srfzv2qkd) · Daily Dose of Data Science \| Avi Chawla \| Substack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Self-Attention: The Innovation That Changed AI](https://daily.dev/posts/self-attention-the-innovation-that-changed-ai-x8tcpysf8) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Build LLM from Scratch, Chapter 2 — Working with Text Data](https://daily.dev/posts/build-llm-from-scratch-chapter-2-working-with-text-data-7y9wigyhf) · ElixirStatus · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [A Visual Guide to Attention Variants in Modern LLMs](https://daily.dev/posts/a-visual-guide-to-attention-variants-in-modern-llms-g7kuqvzmv) · Sebastian Raschka · 6 upvotes · 0 comments - [How LLMs Handle Infinite Context With Finite Memory](https://daily.dev/posts/how-llms-handle-infinite-context-with-finite-memory-4eiofc662) · Towards Data Science · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#webdev](https://daily.dev/tags/webdev), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#elixir](https://daily.dev/tags/elixir) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-heart-of-an-llm-attention-mechanism-in-elixir-jdpdw1rdb) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Heart of an LLM: Attention Mechanism in Elixir","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-heart-of-an-llm-attention-mechanism-in-elixir-jdpdw1rdb","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-heart-of-an-llm-attention-mechanism-in-elixir-jdpdw1rdb"},"datePublished":"2026-03-28T17:31:59.980Z","dateModified":"2026-03-28T17:32:25.054Z","description":"A hands-on walkthrough of implementing LLM attention mechanisms in Elixir using the Nx and Axon libraries, based on Sebastian Raschka's 'Build a LLM from...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/bde87c5f8c203285fa5cc5e42af139a1?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/bde87c5f8c203285fa5cc5e42af139a1?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"ElixirStatus","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"ElixirStatus","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/22e4640538124187827caf8cc8e39190","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/elixirstatus"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-heart-of-an-llm-attention-mechanism-in-elixir-jdpdw1rdb","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"webdev,llm,elixir","timeRequired":"PT52M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"ElixirStatus","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/elixirstatus"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The Heart of an LLM: Attention Mechanism in Elixir"}]} ```