NLP Lineage

11 December 2023 · Language modelling

Mixtral 8x7B

Mixtral of Experts

A. Jiang, A. Sablayrolles, A. Roux, et al.

Date
11 December 2023
What the date marks
Model release
Kind
Model
Organisation
Mistral AI
Access
Apache 2.0
Other dates
paper 2024-01-08
Threads
In the guided tour
Chapter 8. The weights get out
Learning phases
2. How LLMs are trained; 8. Training from scratch

Notable: no later milestone in the data is documented as descending from it. How levels are decided

Read the primary source (arxiv.org)

Full summary in progress. Until then, this page shows the milestone's record from the research data.

What it changed

Before it

Mixture-of-experts models were built and kept inside large labs.

The problem

Nobody outside those labs could study or deploy a sparse model.

What it introduced

An open sparse MoE, 47B total parameters with about 13B active per token, matching much larger dense models.

Why it matters

It brought MoE into the open ecosystem and made the total-versus-active parameter distinction common knowledge.

What modern models inherit

Sparse open models as a normal deployment option.

What came next

DeepSeekMoE, Llama 4, Kimi and the open MoE era.

Before and after

The milestones it descends from, and the milestones that descend from it. Work developed alongside it is not counted. Weak links are left out unless you include them.

Before: where it came from

Mixtral 8x7B has 37 documented ancestors across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 13 turning points among them.

Mixtral 8x7B has 37 documented ancestors across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

Mixtral 8x7B has 39 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 13 turning points among them.

Mixtral 8x7B has 39 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

  1. 2023Mixtral 8x7BThis milestone.
  2. 2023Mistral 7BMixtral 8x7B built directly on thisChapter 8. The weights get out
  3. 2023Grouped-query attention Turning pointMistral 7B built directly on thisChapter 9. Making it run anywhere
  4. 2022FlashAttentionMistral 7B was influenced by thisChapter 9. Making it run anywhere
  5. 2021Switch TransformerMixtral 8x7B built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  6. 2020BigBirdFlashAttention succeeded thisChapter 10. Reading more than you remember
  7. 2020GShard Turning pointMixtral 8x7B built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  8. 2020LongformerMistral 7B was influenced by thisChapter 10. Reading more than you remember
  9. 2019Multi-query attentionGrouped-query attention built directly on thisChapter 9. Making it run anywhere
  10. 2019T5 Turning pointSwitch Transformer built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  11. 2019C4 Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  12. 2019Sparse Transformer Turning pointMistral 7B was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  13. 2019GPT-2 Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  14. 2019WebTextGPT-2 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  15. 2018BERT Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  16. 2018SentencePieceT5 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  17. 2018GPT-1BERT was influenced by this
    GPT-2 built directly on this    Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  18. 2018ELMoBERT was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  19. 2018ULMFiTBERT was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  20. 2017CoVeELMo was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  21. 2017Transformer Turning pointSparse Transformer built directly on this
    T5 built directly on this
    Longformer built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  22. 2017Sparse MoE Turning pointMixtral 8x7B was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  23. 2016Layer normTransformer built directly on this
    GPT-2 built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  24. 2015Residual connectionsTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  25. 2015LM pretraining Turning pointBERT was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  26. 2015BPE tokenizationGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  27. 2015Luong attentionTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  28. 2014AdamTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  29. 2014GloVeELMo built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  30. 2014Seq2seq Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  31. 2014Attention Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  32. 2014GRU / encoder-decoderAttention built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  33. 2013word2vecELMo was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  34. 2011NLP from scratchELMo was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  35. 2003Neural LMNLP from scratch was influenced by this
    word2vec was influenced by this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  36. 1997LSTM Turning pointSparse MoE built directly on thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  37. 1991Mixture of expertsSparse MoE built directly on thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  38. 1990Recurrent networksLSTM was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  1. 2023Mixtral 8x7BThis milestone.
  2. 2023Mistral 7BMixtral 8x7B built directly on thisChapter 8. The weights get out
  3. 2023Grouped-query attention Turning pointMistral 7B built directly on thisChapter 9. Making it run anywhere
  4. 2022FlashAttentionMistral 7B was influenced by thisChapter 9. Making it run anywhere
  5. 2021Switch TransformerMixtral 8x7B built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  6. 2020BigBirdFlashAttention succeeded thisChapter 10. Reading more than you remember
  7. 2020GShard Turning pointMixtral 8x7B built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  8. 2020LongformerMistral 7B was influenced by thisChapter 10. Reading more than you remember
  9. 2019Multi-query attentionGrouped-query attention built directly on thisChapter 9. Making it run anywhere
  10. 2019T5 Turning pointSwitch Transformer built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  11. 2019C4 Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  12. 2019Sparse Transformer Turning pointMistral 7B was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  13. 2019GPT-2 Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  14. 2019WebTextGPT-2 was influenced by this
    C4 was influenced by this (indirect influence)    Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  15. 2019Transformer-XLSparse Transformer was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  16. 2018BERT Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  17. 2018SentencePieceT5 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  18. 2018GPT-1BERT was influenced by this
    GPT-2 built directly on this    Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  19. 2018ELMoBERT was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  20. 2018ULMFiTBERT was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  21. 2017CoVeELMo was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  22. 2017Transformer Turning pointSparse Transformer built directly on this
    T5 built directly on this
    Longformer built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  23. 2017ConvS2STransformer was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  24. 2017Sparse MoE Turning pointMixtral 8x7B was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  25. 2016Layer normTransformer built directly on this
    GPT-2 built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  26. 2015Residual connectionsTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  27. 2015LM pretraining Turning pointBERT was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  28. 2015BPE tokenizationGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  29. 2015Luong attentionTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  30. 2014AdamTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  31. 2014GloVeELMo built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  32. 2014Seq2seq Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  33. 2014Attention Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  34. 2014GRU / encoder-decoderAttention built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  35. 2013word2vecELMo was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  36. 2011NLP from scratchELMo was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  37. 2003Neural LMNLP from scratch was influenced by this
    word2vec was influenced by this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  38. 1997LSTM Turning pointSparse MoE built directly on thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  39. 1991Mixture of expertsSparse MoE built directly on thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  40. 1990Recurrent networksLSTM was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability

After: what it led to

No documented descendants are recorded for Mixtral 8x7B without weak links.

No documented descendants are recorded for Mixtral 8x7B without weak links.

Mixtral 8x7B has 2 recorded descendants, including indirect ones, across 1 chapter, reaching forward to Muse Spark in 2026. Showing its direct descendants.

Mixtral 8x7B has 2 recorded descendants, including indirect ones, across 1 chapter, reaching forward to Muse Spark in 2026. Showing all of them.

  1. 2023Mixtral 8x7BThis milestone.
  2. 2025Llama 4was influenced by Mixtral 8x7B (indirect influence)Chapter 8. The weights get out
  3. 2026Muse Sparksucceeded Llama 4Chapter 8. The weights get out

Direct links and their sources

Where it came from

Built directly on

Influenced by

What it led to

Influenced

Terms