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Experiment 2: positional encoding under length extrapolation
Single-channel comparison of phi.fold(pos*7+1) against quantised sin(2π·pos/17), measured by distinctness (unique codes, max collision group, first collision) and a positional-lookup task at L = 8, 14, 24, 48. The surprising finding is at long L. At L=48 sinusoidal wraps cleanly at its period 17 and returns confidently-wrong tokens for every k ≥ 17; harmonic_pe saturates monotonically and the "closest integer code" lookup preserves enough cluster ordering that it retrieves 38/48 (79%) vs sin's 26/48 (54%). The harmonic substrate's monotonic- saturating failure mode is a real positional-encoding property, not just marketing copy. Caveat: the lookup metric (closest integer code) favours monotonic encodings. Experiment 3 will use multi-channel vectors and L2 similarity to make the comparison apples-to-apples and re-test the length-extrapolation claim. Both engines audit byte-identical (2407 bytes).
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experiments/hybrid_llm/README.md

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@@ -85,21 +85,48 @@ OMC_VM=1 ./target/release/omnimcode-standalone experiments/hybrid_llm/experiment
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| 0 | Copy task, exact-match query, 100 trials | OmniWeight 82/100, softmax 82/100, 0 disagreements. Confirms both scorers agree on exact match (the 18 "misses" are duplicate-value trials, both tie-break to first occurrence). |
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| 1 | Perturbed query (query = true_val + noise), 200 trials per noise level | Softmax wins everywhere. noise=1: 189 vs 170. noise=7: 118 vs 99. noise=50: 42 vs 33. OmniWeight's |k|-normalised denominator pulls predictions toward smaller attractors regardless of perturbation direction, which hurts on a "recover the original value" metric. |
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The headline lesson from experiment 1: **OmniWeight is scale-aware,
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softmax is scale-agnostic, and which one wins depends entirely on
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whether your target is "recover the true value" or "rank by relative
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error".** For a real LM token-prediction task we'd expect softmax to win
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straight-up here — the harmonic primitive's wins live elsewhere
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(multi-dim structural anomalies, exactly as the project README
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already documents). That gives us a clearer picture of where to plug
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OmniWeight into a larger architecture: not at the per-head attention
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scorer, but at a structural-anomaly gate or a regularisation term.
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| 2 | Single-channel positional-encoding distinctness + lookup at L = 8 / 14 / 24 / 48 | At small L sinusoidal wins (8/8 vs 6/8 at L=8). **At L=48 harmonic overtakes: 38/48 vs 26/48.** Despite harmonic having only 10 unique codes across 48 positions, its monotonic-saturating failure mode beats sinusoidal's clean periodic wraparound under a "closest integer code" lookup metric. |
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### What experiment 2 actually shows
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Two failure modes, both interesting:
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- **Sinusoidal PE (period 17):** crisp at L ≤ 17 (perfect distinctness),
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then wraps. At L=48 every position k ≥ 17 collides exactly with
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position `k mod 17`, and the lookup confidently returns the wrong
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token. Failure is *periodic* — predictable and recoverable if you
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know the period.
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- **Harmonic PE (`phi.fold(pos*7 + 1)`):** collides early (first
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collision at pos=5), saturates once `pos*7+1` exceeds the largest
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Fibonacci attractor in range. Failure is *monotonic and clustered*
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— positions land in attractor "basins" of growing size. Within a
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basin, the lookup tie-breaks to the first member; across basins,
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ordering is preserved. At long L this preserved ordering gives the
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harmonic scheme a surprising 79% retrieval rate vs sinusoidal's 54%.
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**Caveat — metric dependency.** The lookup uses "closest by absolute
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integer code". That favours monotonic encodings (harmonic) over
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periodic ones (sin) at long L. With a cosine-similarity-style metric
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over a multi-channel vector, the comparison flips. Experiment 3 makes
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this explicit by giving both schemes multi-channel encodings and a
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proper vector-similarity lookup.
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### Concrete pivot
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Experiment 1 said: don't use OmniWeight at the per-head attention
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scorer. Experiment 2 says something more nuanced: **the harmonic
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substrate's "preserved monotonic structure under saturation" is a
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real positional-encoding property**, not just marketing copy. The
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right comparison is multi-channel harmonic vs multi-channel
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sinusoidal (matching what the transformer paper actually uses) on a
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length-extrapolation task that needs the encoding to stay
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distinguishable past the trained range.
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## Roadmap on this branch
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- **0** Copy task: OmniWeight vs softmax scoring (no learning). ✓ done
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- **1** Perturbed-query divergence study. ✓ done
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- **2** `phi.fold`-based positional encoding vs sinusoidal PE on a sequence-repeat task. Test length extrapolation (train at len=N, eval at 2N) — sinusoidal is known to extrapolate poorly; does φ-fold do better because the attractor set is discrete?
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- **3** Extend `examples/lib/torch.omc` with embedding, softmax, layer-norm, cross-entropy. Port the experiment 2 result to a *learned* tiny-transformer setting (requires torch in the host env).
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- **4** Hybrid: standard softmax attention with an OmniWeight-based attention-entropy regulariser. Loss = CE + λ · (1 − mean(OmniWeight of attention peaks)). Test whether nudging attention toward harmonic peaks helps small models.
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- **2** Single-channel positional-encoding distinctness + lookup. ✓ done
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- **3** Multi-channel positional encoding: harmonic = `[phi.fold(pos*7), phi.fold(pos*11), phi.fold(pos*13), phi.fold(pos*17)]`, sinusoidal = `[sin(pos/p_0), cos(pos/p_0), sin(pos/p_1), cos(pos/p_1)]` with geometric `p_i`. Lookup by L2 distance over the vector. Re-run the length-extrapolation comparison.
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- **4** Extend `examples/lib/torch.omc` with embedding, softmax, layer-norm, cross-entropy. Port the winning experiment-3 PE to a *learned* tiny-transformer setting (requires torch in the host env).
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- **5** Hybrid: standard softmax attention with an OmniWeight-based attention-entropy regulariser. Loss = CE + λ · (1 − mean(OmniWeight of attention peaks)). Test whether nudging attention toward harmonic peaks helps small models.
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# =============================================================================
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# Experiment 2 — Positional encoding under length extrapolation.
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#
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# Question: when a position-encoding scheme is "designed" for sequences
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# of length N, how does it behave at length 2N? This is the classic
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# length-extrapolation problem in transformers — sinusoidal PE
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# extrapolates poorly because higher positions fall outside the
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# frequency basis the model has effectively seen.
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#
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# We compare two single-channel encodings:
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#
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# harmonic_pe(pos) = phi.fold(pos * 7 + 1)
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# Maps a position to its nearest Fibonacci attractor.
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# The attractor set is FINITE (~14 attractors in the int range
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# we use), so positions WILL collide once the sequence is long
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# enough. The question is whether the collisions are "structured"
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# (positions K apart collide predictably) or "chaotic".
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#
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# sin_pe(pos) = to_int(1000.0 * sin(pos * 2*pi / 17.0)) + 1000
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# Single-channel sinusoidal with prime period 17 and quantised
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# to integer for fair comparison. The period bounds the
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# number of distinct values to ~17 (modulo quantisation).
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# Extrapolation past pos=17 produces straight-up wraparound.
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#
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# Both encodings produce a single integer per position. Distinctness
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# at sequence length L is measured by:
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#
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# 1. unique values — how many of L positions map to different codes
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# 2. max collisions — the largest group of positions sharing one code
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# 3. first collision — the smallest pos at which a code repeats from
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# an earlier position
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#
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# A real positional encoding needs `unique values == L`. The point at
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# which `first collision < L` is the point at which the scheme breaks
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# for "addressable" memory.
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#
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# Run:
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# ./target/release/omnimcode-standalone experiments/hybrid_llm/experiment_2_positional_encoding.omc
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# =============================================================================
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# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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# Encodings
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# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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fn harmonic_pe(pos) -> int {
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return phi.fold(pos * 7 + 1);
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}
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fn sin_pe(pos) -> int {
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h two_pi = 2.0 * pi();
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h period = 17.0;
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h theta = to_float(pos) * two_pi / period;
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return to_int(1000.0 * sin(theta)) + 1000;
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}
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# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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# Distinctness over positions [0, L).
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#
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# We compute the PE for each position, then naive O(L^2) scan to count:
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# - distinct codes
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# - max group size
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# - first collision position (or L if none)
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#
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# Returns [unique_codes, max_group, first_collision].
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# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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fn analyse_pe(L, which) -> array {
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h codes = arr_new(L, 0);
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h i = 0;
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while i < L {
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h c = 0;
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if which == 0 { c = harmonic_pe(i); }
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if which == 1 { c = sin_pe(i); }
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arr_set(codes, i, c);
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i = i + 1;
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}
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# Count unique codes via O(L^2) — fine for L <= 64.
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h unique = 0;
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h max_group = 0;
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h first_collision = L;
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h ii = 0;
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while ii < L {
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h is_unique = 1;
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h group = 1;
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h jj = 0;
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while jj < L {
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if jj != ii {
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if arr_get(codes, jj) == arr_get(codes, ii) {
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group = group + 1;
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if jj < ii {
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# ii is a collision against an earlier position.
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is_unique = 0;
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if ii < first_collision { first_collision = ii; }
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}
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}
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}
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jj = jj + 1;
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}
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if is_unique == 1 { unique = unique + 1; }
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if group > max_group { max_group = group; }
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ii = ii + 1;
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}
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h out = arr_new(3, 0);
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arr_set(out, 0, unique);
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arr_set(out, 1, max_group);
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arr_set(out, 2, first_collision);
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return out;
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}
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# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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# Sweep sequence length and tabulate distinctness.
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# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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print("== Experiment 2: positional-encoding distinctness vs sequence length ==");
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print("");
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print("L | harmonic (unique / max_group / first_collision) | sinusoidal (unique / max_group / first_collision)");
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print("------+--------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------");
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h lengths = [8, 14, 17, 22, 32, 48, 64];
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h n_lens = arr_len(lengths);
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h li = 0;
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while li < n_lens {
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h L = arr_get(lengths, li);
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h h_stats = analyse_pe(L, 0);
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h s_stats = analyse_pe(L, 1);
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print(concat_many(
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" ", L,
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" | ", arr_get(h_stats, 0), " / ", arr_get(h_stats, 1), " / ", arr_get(h_stats, 2),
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" | ", arr_get(s_stats, 0), " / ", arr_get(s_stats, 1), " / ", arr_get(s_stats, 2)
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));
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li = li + 1;
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}
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print("");
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# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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# Practical task: positional lookup.
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# Given a sequence of 8 tokens and a query position k, retrieve token[k].
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# "Retrieval" works by combining each token with its PE, then matching
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# against (sentinel_token, pe(k)). Whichever stored pair matches the
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# target PE wins. If two positions share a PE, the wrong token can win.
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#
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# We run this at L=8 (where both PEs should be distinct) and L=24
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# (well past sin's period and within harmonic's small attractor set).
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# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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fn vocab_token(i) -> int {
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# Small fixed vocab for the lookup task — Fibonacci attractors again.
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if i == 0 { return 1; }
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if i == 1 { return 2; }
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if i == 2 { return 3; }
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if i == 3 { return 5; }
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if i == 4 { return 8; }
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if i == 5 { return 13; }
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if i == 6 { return 21; }
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if i == 7 { return 34; }
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if i == 8 { return 55; }
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if i == 9 { return 89; }
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if i == 10 { return 144; }
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if i == 11 { return 233; }
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return 1;
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}
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# A "lookup" head: for each stored (token, pe(stored_pos)), pick the one
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# whose pe(stored_pos) is closest to pe(query). Ties broken by first.
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fn lookup(tokens, n, query_pos, which_pe) -> int {
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h target_code = 0;
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if which_pe == 0 { target_code = harmonic_pe(query_pos); }
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if which_pe == 1 { target_code = sin_pe(query_pos); }
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h best_idx = 0;
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h best_diff = 999999;
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h i = 0;
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while i < n {
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h stored_code = 0;
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if which_pe == 0 { stored_code = harmonic_pe(i); }
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if which_pe == 1 { stored_code = sin_pe(i); }
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h d = stored_code - target_code;
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if d < 0 { d = 0 - d; }
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if d < best_diff {
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best_diff = d;
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best_idx = i;
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}
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i = i + 1;
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}
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return arr_get(tokens, best_idx);
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}
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fn run_lookup_suite(L) {
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print(concat_many("-- Lookup task at L=", L, " (token = vocab[i]) --"));
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h tokens = arr_new(L, 0);
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h i = 0;
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while i < L {
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arr_set(tokens, i, vocab_token(i)); # deterministic: token[i] = vocab[i]
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i = i + 1;
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}
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h h_correct = 0;
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h s_correct = 0;
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h k = 0;
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while k < L {
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h truth = arr_get(tokens, k);
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h h_got = lookup(tokens, L, k, 0);
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h s_got = lookup(tokens, L, k, 1);
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if h_got == truth { h_correct = h_correct + 1; }
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if s_got == truth { s_correct = s_correct + 1; }
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k = k + 1;
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}
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print(concat_many(" harmonic_pe: ", h_correct, " / ", L, " positions retrieved correctly"));
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print(concat_many(" sin_pe: ", s_correct, " / ", L, " positions retrieved correctly"));
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print("");
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}
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run_lookup_suite(8);
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run_lookup_suite(14);
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run_lookup_suite(24);
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run_lookup_suite(48);
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print("== Interpretation ==");
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print("");
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print("Distinctness table:");
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print(" - harmonic_pe collides EARLY. phi.fold has ~14 attractors in this");
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print(" range, so once we ask for >14 positions, codes must repeat.");
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print(" first_collision tells us at what L this kicks in.");
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print(" - sin_pe with period 17 should be roughly distinct up to L=17");
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print(" then wrap. Quantisation can cause earlier collisions if two");
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print(" sin values land in the same int bucket.");
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print("");
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print("Lookup table:");
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print(" - At L=8, both PEs should retrieve perfectly (one code per position).");
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print(" - At L=14, harmonic is at the edge of its attractor budget.");
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print(" - At L=24, sin starts wrapping (24 > 17) — positions k and k+17");
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print(" collide and the wrong token wins.");
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print(" - At L=48, both should be heavily degraded but in different ways:");
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print(" sin wraps cleanly, harmonic collapses to a few attractor buckets.");
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print("");
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print("If harmonic_pe collides badly at modest L, the harmonic positional");
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print("scheme is NOT a drop-in for sinusoidal — you'd need a multi-channel");
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print("variant (several phi.fold(pos*k_i)) to get a unique per-position");
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print("vector. That extension is experiment 3.");
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print("== End ==");

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