Tydra: An Efficient Hybrid Model for Tabular Data

Abstract:Transformer-based tabular foundation models such as TabPFN achieve strong predictive performance but incur quadratic computational cost with context length. On the other hand, subquadratic SSM-based alternatives such as Hydra trade away accuracy for efficiency. To balance both, we introduce Tydra, a hybrid Transformer-State Space Model (SSM) architecture for tabular in-context learning that interleaves attention and SSM layers. Across 30 OpenML datasets, Tydra reduces inference time by 30% relative to TabPFN while retaining much of its predictive performance. Tydra also outperforms an approximately ten-times-larger Hydra model while providing faster inference. The results indicate that hybrid architectures are a promising direction for tabular foundation models.

Machine Learning (cs.LG)

arXiv:2608.21199 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2608.21199v1 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.21199 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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