Models
DeepSeek for Engineers: MLA, MoE, and GRPO — the Three Ideas Behind the Cheapest Frontier-Class Training Run
An engineer's briefing on DeepSeek's V3/R1/V4 lineage — Multi-head Latent Attention, Mixture-of-Experts, and Group Relative Policy Optimisation — and why understanding these three ideas matters more than picking a specific DeepSeek version number.
AI Playbook2026-07-2911 min readadvanced
Executive takeaway
An engineer's briefing on DeepSeek's V3/R1/V4 lineage — Multi-head Latent Attention, Mixture-of-Experts, and Group Relative Policy Optimisation — and why understanding these three ideas matters more than picking a specific DeepSeek version number.
In this briefing
- Key ideas
- Practical implications
- What to do next
Why it matters
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