TabNSA: Native Sparse Attention for Efficient Tabular Data Learning (2503.09850v1)

Abstract: Tabular data poses unique challenges for deep learning due to its heterogeneous features and lack of inherent spatial structure. This paper introduces TabNSA, a novel deep learning architecture leveraging Native Sparse Attention (NSA) specifically for efficient tabular data processing. TabNSA incorporates a dynamic hierarchical sparse strategy, combining coarse-grained feature compression with fine-grained feature selection to preserve both global context awareness and local precision. By dynamically focusing on relevant subsets of features, TabNSA effectively captures intricate feature interactions. Extensive experiments demonstrate that TabNSA consistently outperforms existing methods, including both deep learning architectures and ensemble decision trees, achieving state-of-the-art performance across various benchmark datasets.