A Comprehensive Survey on Long Context Language Modeling

Jiaheng Liu; Dawei Zhu; Zhiqi Bai; Yancheng He; Huanxuan Liao; Haoran Que; Zekun Wang; Chenchen Zhang; Ge Zhang; Jiebin Zhang; Yuanxing Zhang; Zhuo Chen; Hangyu Guo; Shilong Li; Ziqiang Liu; Yong Shan; Yifan Song; Jiayi Tian; Wenhao Wu; Zhejian Zhou; Ruijie Zhu; Junlan Feng; Yang Gao; Shizhu He; Zhoujun Li; Tianyu Liu; Fanyu Meng; Wenbo Su; Yingshui Tan; Zili Wang; Jian Yang; Wei Ye; Bo Zheng; Wangchunshu Zhou; Wenhao Huang; Sujian Li; Zhaoxiang Zhang

arXiv · 2503.17407

A Comprehensive Survey on Long Context Language Modeling

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Abstract

Efficient processing of long contexts has been a persistent pursuit in Natural Language Processing. With the growing number of long documents, dialogues, and other textual data, it is important to develop Long Context Language Models (LCLMs) that can process and analyze extensive inputs in an effective and efficient way. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on recent advances in long-context modeling for large language models. Our survey is structured around three key aspects: how to obtain effective and efficient LCLMs, how to train and deploy LCLMs efficiently, and how to evaluate and analyze LCLMs comprehensively. For the first aspect, we discuss data strategies, architectural designs, and workflow approaches oriented with long context processing. For the second aspect, we provide a detailed examination of the infrastructure required for LCLM training and inference. For the third aspect, we present evaluation paradigms for long-context comprehension and long-form generation, as well as behavioral analysis and mechanism interpretability of LCLMs. Beyond these three key aspects, we thoroughly explore the diverse application scenarios where existing LCLMs have been deployed and outline promising future development directions. This survey provides an up-to-date review of the literature on long-context LLMs, which we wish to serve as a valuable resource for both researchers and engineers. An associated GitHub repository collecting the latest papers and repos is available at: \href{https://github.com/LCLM-Horizon/A-Comprehensive-Survey-For-Long-Context-Language-Modeling}{\color[RGB]{175,36,67}{LCLM-Horizon}}.

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Jiaheng Liu, Dawei Zhu, Zhiqi Bai, Yancheng He, Huanxuan Liao, Haoran Que, Zekun Wang, Chenchen Zhang, Ge Zhang, Jiebin Zhang, Yuanxing Zhang, Zhuo Chen, Hangyu Guo, Shilong Li, Ziqiang Liu, Yong Shan, Yifan Song, Jiayi Tian, Wenhao Wu, Zhejian Zhou, Ruijie Zhu, Junlan Feng, Yang Gao, Shizhu He, Zhoujun Li, Tianyu Liu, Fanyu Meng, Wenbo Su, Yingshui Tan, Zili Wang, Jian Yang, Wei Ye, Bo Zheng, Wangchunshu Zhou, Wenhao Huang, Sujian Li, Zhaoxiang Zhang. 2025-11-24. A Comprehensive Survey on Long Context Language Modeling. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.17407

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