// Algorithms Atlas
Relationship map
Hover an algorithm to light up everything you need to learn first. Pick a route, or drag the year slider to watch 1901→2025 unfold.
223 nodes298 prerequisite linkssolid = prerequisite, dashed = related
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◇ Classical Machine Learning (18)
- Principal Component Analysis (PCA) 1901 · after Linear Regression
- Logistic Regression 1958 · after Linear Regression
- k-Nearest Neighbors 1967
- k-Means Clustering 1982
- Support Vector Machine 1995 · after Logistic Regression
- Regularized Regression (Lasso / Ridge) 1996 · after Linear Regression
- AdaBoost 1997 · after Decision Trees (CART)
- Naive Bayes 1997
- Random Forest 2001 · after Decision Trees (CART)
- Gradient Boosting (GBDT) 2001 · after Decision Trees (CART), Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD)
- XGBoost 2016 · after Gradient Boosting (GBDT)
- Linear Regression
- Decision Trees (CART)
- Expectation–Maximization (EM) 1977 · after k-Means Clustering
- DBSCAN (Density-Based Clustering) 1996 · after k-Means Clustering
- t-SNE 2008 · after Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
- LightGBM 2017 · after Gradient Boosting (GBDT)
- UMAP 2018 · after Principal Component Analysis (PCA), t-SNE
⬡ Deep Learning Foundations (23)
- Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) 1951 · after Linear Regression
- Perceptron 1958
- Backpropagation 1986 · after Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD), Perceptron
- Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) 1997 · after Backpropagation
- Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) 1998 · after Backpropagation
- Autoencoder 2006 · after Backpropagation
- Weight Initialization (Xavier / He) 2010 · after Backpropagation
- Dropout 2012 · after Backpropagation
- Word2Vec 2013 · after Backpropagation
- Sequence-to-Sequence Learning 2014 · after Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)
- Adam 2014 · after Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD)
- Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) 2014 · after Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)
- Batch Normalization 2015 · after Backpropagation
- Residual Networks (ResNet) 2015 · after Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Batch Normalization
- U-Net 2015 · after Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)
- Layer Normalization 2016 · after Batch Normalization
- GELU 2016 · after Perceptron
- AdamW (Decoupled Weight Decay) 2017 · after Adam
- RMSNorm 2019 · after Layer Normalization
- SwiGLU (Gated Linear Units) 2020 · after GELU, Transformer & Self-Attention
- Muon Optimizer 2024 · after AdamW (Decoupled Weight Decay)
- GloVe 2014 · after Word2Vec
- ELMo (Contextual Word Embeddings) 2018 · after Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Word2Vec
◎ Transformers & Attention (18)
- Attention (Bahdanau) 2014 · after Sequence-to-Sequence Learning
- Byte-Pair Encoding (BPE) Tokenization 2015
- Transformer & Self-Attention 2017 · after Attention (Bahdanau), Residual Networks (ResNet)
- BERT 2018 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- SentencePiece Tokenization 2018 · after Byte-Pair Encoding (BPE) Tokenization
- T5 (Text-to-Text Transfer Transformer) 2019 · after Transformer & Self-Attention, BERT
- GPT-3 & In-Context Learning 2020 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- Sliding-Window & Sparse Attention 2020 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- Linear Attention 2020 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- Rotary Position Embedding (RoPE) 2021 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- FlashAttention (v1–v3) 2022 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- Grouped-Query Attention (GQA) 2023 · after Multi-Query Attention (MQA)
- YaRN (Context Window Extension) 2023 · after Rotary Position Embedding (RoPE)
- Ring Attention 2023 · after FlashAttention (v1–v3)
- Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) 2024 · after Grouped-Query Attention (GQA), KV Cache
- Native Sparse Attention (NSA) 2025 · after Sliding-Window & Sparse Attention, FlashAttention (v1–v3)
- Multi-Query Attention (MQA) 2019 · after Transformer & Self-Attention, KV Cache
- ALiBi (Attention with Linear Biases) 2021 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
✳ Mixture of Experts (6)
- Sparsely-Gated Mixture of Experts 2017 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- Switch Transformer 2021 · after Sparsely-Gated Mixture of Experts
- Mixtral (Top-2 MoE) 2024 · after Sparsely-Gated Mixture of Experts
- DeepSeekMoE (Fine-Grained & Shared Experts) 2024 · after Mixtral (Top-2 MoE)
- Auxiliary-Loss-Free Load Balancing 2024 · after DeepSeekMoE (Fine-Grained & Shared Experts)
- GShard (Expert Parallelism) 2020 · after Sparsely-Gated Mixture of Experts
∿ New Architectures: SSM & Linear Attention (11)
- Mamba (Selective State Spaces) 2023 · after Structured State Spaces (S4)
- RWKV 2023 · after Linear Attention, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)
- Gated Delta Networks 2024 · after Linear Attention, Mamba-2 (State Space Duality)
- Hybrid Architectures (Jamba) 2024 · after Mamba (Selective State Spaces), Sparsely-Gated Mixture of Experts
- Diffusion Language Models (LLaDA) 2025 · after BERT, Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPM)
- Looped Language Models 2018 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- Structured State Spaces (S4) 2021 · after Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)
- Retentive Network (RetNet) 2023 · after Linear Attention
- Hyena Hierarchy 2023 · after Structured State Spaces (S4)
- Mamba-2 (State Space Duality) 2024 · after Mamba (Selective State Spaces), Linear Attention
- xLSTM 2024 · after Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)
▲ Pretraining, Scaling & Distributed Training (9)
- Mixed Precision & FP8 Training 2017 · after Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD)
- Pipeline Parallelism (GPipe) 2018 · after Tensor Parallelism (Megatron-LM)
- ZeRO / FSDP (Sharded Data Parallelism) 2019 · after Mixed Precision & FP8 Training
- Tensor Parallelism (Megatron-LM) 2019 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- Scaling Laws 2020 · after GPT-3 & In-Context Learning
- Chinchilla Compute-Optimal Scaling 2022 · after Scaling Laws
- Emergent Abilities 2022 · after Scaling Laws
- Multi-Token Prediction (MTP) 2024 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- μP (Maximal Update Parametrization) 2022 · after AdamW (Decoupled Weight Decay)
⚖ Alignment & Preference Optimization (10)
- Reward Modeling (Preference Learning) 2017 · after Logistic Regression
- Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) 2022 · after Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), Instruction Tuning (FLAN)
- Constitutional AI / RLAIF 2022 · after Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)
- Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) 2023 · after Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)
- SimPO (Simple Preference Optimization) 2024 · after Direct Preference Optimization (DPO)
- Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) 2024 · after Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)
- RL with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) 2024 · after Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO)
- DAPO 2025 · after Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO)
- KTO (Kahneman–Tversky Optimization) 2024 · after Direct Preference Optimization (DPO)
- ORPO (Odds Ratio Preference Optimization) 2024 · after Direct Preference Optimization (DPO)
∞ Reasoning & Test-Time Compute (9)
- Chain-of-Thought Prompting 2022 · after GPT-3 & In-Context Learning
- Self-Consistency 2022 · after Chain-of-Thought Prompting
- STaR (Self-Taught Reasoner) 2022 · after Chain-of-Thought Prompting, Instruction Tuning (FLAN)
- Tree of Thoughts 2023 · after Chain-of-Thought Prompting
- Process Reward Models (PRM) 2023 · after Reward Modeling (Preference Learning), Chain-of-Thought Prompting
- Self-Refine 2023 · after Chain-of-Thought Prompting
- Test-Time Compute Scaling 2024 · after Self-Consistency, Process Reward Models (PRM)
- DeepSeek-R1 Reasoning RL Recipe 2025 · after Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), RL with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR)
- Budget Forcing (s1) 2025 · after Test-Time Compute Scaling
⚙ Fine-tuning & PEFT (8)
- Adapters 2019 · after BERT
- Instruction Tuning (FLAN) 2021 · after T5 (Text-to-Text Transfer Transformer), GPT-3 & In-Context Learning
- LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) 2021 · after Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Adapters
- Self-Instruct 2022 · after Instruction Tuning (FLAN)
- Model Merging & Task Arithmetic 2022 · after LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation)
- QLoRA 2023 · after LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation), LLM.int8() & Outlier Handling
- Prefix & Prompt Tuning 2021 · after Adapters
- DoRA (Weight-Decomposed LoRA) 2024 · after LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation)
◈ Quantization, Pruning & Distillation (7)
- Knowledge Distillation 2015 · after Logistic Regression
- LLM.int8() & Outlier Handling 2022 · after Mixed Precision & FP8 Training
- GPTQ 2022 · after LLM.int8() & Outlier Handling
- SmoothQuant 2022 · after LLM.int8() & Outlier Handling
- AWQ (Activation-aware Weight Quantization) 2023 · after GPTQ
- BitNet b1.58 (Ternary LLMs) 2024 · after LLM.int8() & Outlier Handling
- SparseGPT 2023 · after GPTQ
⚡ Inference Acceleration & Serving (10)
- Temperature & Nucleus (Top-p) Sampling 2019 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- Speculative Decoding 2022 · after KV Cache, Temperature & Nucleus (Top-p) Sampling
- Continuous (Iteration-Level) Batching 2022 · after KV Cache
- PagedAttention (vLLM) 2023 · after KV Cache
- EAGLE 2024 · after Speculative Decoding
- KV Cache · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- RadixAttention (Prefix Caching) 2023 · after PagedAttention (vLLM)
- Attention Sinks (StreamingLLM) 2023 · after KV Cache, Sliding-Window & Sparse Attention
- Medusa 2024 · after Speculative Decoding
- Prefill–Decode Disaggregation 2024 · after KV Cache, Continuous (Iteration-Level) Batching
✦ Diffusion, Flow Matching & Generative Models (15)
- Variational Autoencoder (VAE) 2013 · after Expectation–Maximization (EM), Backpropagation
- VQ-VAE (Neural Discrete Representation) 2017 · after Variational Autoencoder (VAE)
- Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPM) 2020 · after Variational Autoencoder (VAE)
- Latent Diffusion Models 2021 · after Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPM), Variational Autoencoder (VAE)
- Classifier-Free Guidance (CFG) 2022 · after Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPM)
- Diffusion Transformer (DiT) 2022 · after Latent Diffusion Models, Vision Transformer (ViT)
- Flow Matching 2022 · after Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPM), Score-Based Models via SDEs
- ControlNet 2023 · after Latent Diffusion Models
- Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) 2014 · after Backpropagation
- Normalizing Flows (RealNVP / Glow) 2016 · after Variational Autoencoder (VAE)
- DDIM 2020 · after Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPM)
- Score-Based Models via SDEs 2020 · after Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPM)
- Rectified Flow 2022 · after Flow Matching
- Consistency Models 2023 · after DDIM, Score-Based Models via SDEs
- Visual Autoregressive Modeling (VAR) 2024 · after VQ-VAE (Neural Discrete Representation), Transformer & Self-Attention
◉ Multimodal & Vision (15)
- Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) 2006 · after Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)
- Faster R-CNN (Object Detection) 2015 · after Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Residual Networks (ResNet)
- YOLO (Real-Time Object Detection) 2015 · after Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)
- Vision Transformer (ViT) 2020 · after Transformer & Self-Attention, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)
- NeRF & 3D Gaussian Splatting 2020 · after Backpropagation
- DETR (Detection Transformer) 2020 · after Transformer & Self-Attention, Faster R-CNN (Object Detection)
- wav2vec 2.0 2020 · after Transformer & Self-Attention, Contrastive Learning (InfoNCE)
- CLIP (Contrastive Language–Image Pretraining) 2021 · after Vision Transformer (ViT), Contrastive Learning (InfoNCE)
- Whisper 2022 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- SigLIP (Sigmoid Loss) 2023 · after CLIP (Contrastive Language–Image Pretraining)
- Visual Instruction Tuning (LLaVA) 2023 · after CLIP (Contrastive Language–Image Pretraining), Instruction Tuning (FLAN)
- Segment Anything (SAM) 2023 · after Vision Transformer (ViT)
- Swin Transformer 2021 · after Vision Transformer (ViT)
- Flamingo 2022 · after CLIP (Contrastive Language–Image Pretraining), Transformer & Self-Attention
- VALL-E (Neural Codec Language Model TTS) 2023 · after VQ-VAE (Neural Discrete Representation), GPT-3 & In-Context Learning
⌕ RAG & Vector Retrieval (13)
- BM25 2009
- Product Quantization (PQ) 2011 · after k-Means Clustering, k-Nearest Neighbors
- HNSW (Hierarchical Navigable Small World) 2016 · after k-Nearest Neighbors
- Contrastive Learning (InfoNCE) 2018 · after Logistic Regression
- Sentence Embeddings (Sentence-BERT) 2019 · after BERT, Contrastive Learning (InfoNCE)
- Cross-Encoder Reranking 2019 · after BERT
- Dense Passage Retrieval (DPR) 2020 · after Sentence Embeddings (Sentence-BERT), Contrastive Learning (InfoNCE)
- ColBERT (Late Interaction) 2020 · after BERT, Dense Passage Retrieval (DPR)
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) 2020 · after Dense Passage Retrieval (DPR), GPT-3 & In-Context Learning
- GraphRAG 2024 · after Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- FAISS (Billion-scale GPU Similarity Search) 2017 · after Product Quantization (PQ), HNSW (Hierarchical Navigable Small World)
- Matryoshka Representation Learning 2022 · after Sentence Embeddings (Sentence-BERT)
- HyDE (Hypothetical Document Embeddings) 2022 · after Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Sentence Embeddings (Sentence-BERT)
⌘ Agents & Tool Use (9)
- ReAct (Reason + Act) 2022 · after Chain-of-Thought Prompting
- Function Calling / Tool Use 2023 · after ReAct (Reason + Act)
- Reflexion 2023 · after ReAct (Reason + Act)
- Generative Agents (Memory & Reflection) 2023 · after ReAct (Reason + Act), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Multi-Agent Conversation (AutoGen) 2023 · after ReAct (Reason + Act), Function Calling / Tool Use
- MemGPT (Hierarchical Agent Memory) 2023 · after Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Function Calling / Tool Use
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) 2024 · after Function Calling / Tool Use
- Agent–Computer Interface (SWE-agent) 2024 · after ReAct (Reason + Act), Function Calling / Tool Use
- Toolformer 2023 · after GPT-3 & In-Context Learning
♞ Reinforcement Learning (12)
- Q-Learning 1992 · after Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD)
- Policy Gradient (REINFORCE) 1992 · after Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD)
- Deep Q-Network (DQN) 2013 · after Q-Learning, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)
- DDPG / TD3 (Continuous Control) 2015 · after Deep Q-Network (DQN), Policy Gradient (REINFORCE)
- AlphaGo / AlphaZero (Self-Play + MCTS) 2016 · after Policy Gradient (REINFORCE), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)
- Actor-Critic & A3C/A2C 2016 · after Policy Gradient (REINFORCE), Deep Q-Network (DQN)
- Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) 2017 · after Policy Gradient (REINFORCE)
- Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) 2015 · after Policy Gradient (REINFORCE)
- Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) 2018 · after Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), Deep Q-Network (DQN)
- MuZero 2019 · after AlphaGo / AlphaZero (Self-Play + MCTS)
- Conservative Q-Learning (CQL, Offline RL) 2020 · after Q-Learning, Deep Q-Network (DQN)
- Decision Transformer 2021 · after Transformer & Self-Attention, Deep Q-Network (DQN)
◐ World Models & Self-Supervised Learning (7)
- World Models 2018 · after Variational Autoencoder (VAE), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)
- Dreamer (Latent Imagination) 2019 · after World Models, Soft Actor-Critic (SAC)
- Masked Autoencoders (MAE) 2021 · after Vision Transformer (ViT), BERT
- Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA) 2023 · after Masked Autoencoders (MAE), Vision Transformer (ViT)
- DINOv2 (Self-Supervised Visual Features) 2023 · after Vision Transformer (ViT), SimCLR
- Genie (Generative Interactive Environments) 2024 · after VQ-VAE (Neural Discrete Representation), Transformer & Self-Attention
- SimCLR 2020 · after Contrastive Learning (InfoNCE), Residual Networks (ResNet)
⌬ Graph Neural Networks & AI for Science (3)
- Graph Neural Networks (GCN / GAT) 2016 · after Backpropagation
- AlphaFold 2 2021 · after Transformer & Self-Attention, Graph Neural Networks (GCN / GAT)
- AlphaGeometry (Neuro-Symbolic Reasoning) 2024 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
⌖ Interpretability (9)
- Feature Attribution (Integrated Gradients / SHAP) 2017 · after Backpropagation
- Logit Lens & Probing 2020 · after Transformer & Self-Attention
- Circuits & Induction Heads 2022 · after Transformer & Self-Attention, Logit Lens & Probing
- Superposition 2022 · after Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
- Sparse Autoencoders (SAE) 2023 · after Superposition, Variational Autoencoder (VAE)
- Activation Steering 2023 · after Logit Lens & Probing
- Circuit Tracing & Attribution Graphs 2025 · after Sparse Autoencoders (SAE), Circuits & Induction Heads
- Grad-CAM 2016 · after Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Backpropagation
- Locating & Editing Facts (ROME) 2022 · after Transformer & Self-Attention, Logit Lens & Probing
⛨ Safety, Evaluation & Security (11)
- Adversarial Examples (FGSM) 2014 · after Backpropagation, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)
- Membership Inference Attacks 2016 · after Logistic Regression
- Automated Red Teaming 2022 · after Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)
- GCG Universal Jailbreak Attack 2023 · after Adversarial Examples (FGSM), Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)
- Indirect Prompt Injection 2023 · after Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Function Calling / Tool Use
- LLM-as-a-Judge 2023 · after Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)
- LLM Watermarking 2023 · after Temperature & Nucleus (Top-p) Sampling
- Weak-to-Strong Generalization 2023 · after Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), Knowledge Distillation
- Differentially Private SGD (DP-SGD) 2016 · after Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD)
- AI Safety via Debate 2018 · after Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)
- Sleeper Agents (Backdoors that Persist) 2024 · after Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), Adversarial Examples (FGSM)