Why Are Most Large Models Now Decoder-Only?

Discover why most large language models (LLMs) are decoder-only. Explore their efficiency, performance, and the future of AI architectures in this deep dive.

Since the release of ChatGPT, various large language models (LLMs) have emerged, including Meta's Llama-3, Google's Gemini, and Alibaba's Qianwen.

This raises a question: LLMs are based on the Transformer architecture, so why are most of them decoder-only?

Let's start by reviewing some basic architectural terms.