TOPAS-DSPL: The Neural Core

Dual-Stream Programmatic Learner

Developed by Bitterbot AI

Abstract: TOPAS-DSPL represents the distilled neural essence of the comprehensive TOPAS Neuro-Symbolic architecture. By stripping away the memory systems, symbolic rails, and the scaffolding of the full system, we isolate the specific contribution of the Dual-Stream Programmatic Learner (DSPL). Despite functioning here as a standalone neural baseline without neuro-symbolic aids, this streamlined core demonstrates remarkable robust reasoning, achieving a 24% Solve Rate on the ARC-AGI-2 public evaluation set. This validates the fundamental power of the Bicameral Latent Space independent of auxiliary scaffolding.

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The Vision: "Bicameral" Intelligence

Standard recursive models suffer from compositional drift: as the model iterates, it often forgets the algorithmic rule it is trying to execute because the state and the rule are mixed in a monolithic latent vector.

TOPAS-DSPL solves this by implementing a Bicameral Latent Space that mirrors the separation of brain functions and the Von Neumann architecture:

1. Logic Stream (z_π) - The "Program":

   • Role: Abstract algorithmic planning
   • Behavior: Acts as the CPU/Controller. It looks at the demonstrations (context) and the current state to issue "instructions"
   • Invariant: Evolves to refine the rule, not the pixels

2. Canvas Stream (z_s) - The "Memory":

   • Role: Spatial execution and state representation
   • Behavior: Acts as the GPU/RAM. It receives instructions via Adaptive Layer Norm (AdaLN) and executes local physics updates (NCA-style) on the grid
   • Variant: Evolves to reflect the execution of the rule

This separation allows the Logic Core to "reprogram" the Canvas Core dynamically at every recursive step, synthesizing hierarchical abstraction with recursive parsimony.

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Architecture Overview

graph TD
    Input[Input Grid] --> SpatialEnc[Spatial Encoder]
    Demos[Demonstrations] --> DemoEnc[Demo Encoder]

    subgraph "Logic Core (Transformer)"
        DemoEnc --> Z_L[Logic State z_π]
        Z_L --"Self-Attention"--> Z_L
    end

    subgraph "Canvas Core (CNN/NCA)"
        SpatialEnc --> Z_C[Canvas State z_s]
        Z_C --"3x3 Conv"--> Z_C
    end

    Z_L --"AdaLN Instruction"--> Z_C
    Z_C --"Cross-Attention (Gated)"--> Z_L

    Z_C --> Output[Output Grid]

Key Features

• Dynamic AdaLN Conditioning: The Logic Core projects a dynamic "instruction vector" that modulates the weights of the Canvas Core, effectively compiling a new network for every timestep.

• Test-Time Training (TTT): The model "meditates" on the unique demonstrations of a test puzzle, optimizing its internal program tokens using Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation before generating a solution.

• Test-Time Augmentation (TTA): Robust inference using D8 dihedral group transforms and color permutations with majority voting.

• MuonClip Optimizer: Advanced optimization to handle the non-convex landscape of recursive deep learning.

• Stream Dropout: Regularization forcing Canvas to rely on Logic instructions, preventing the "lazy executive" failure mode.

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Hardware Configurations

TOPAS-DSPL is designed for Recursive Parsimony—achieving SOTA reasoning with tiny parameter counts (~8M - 24M). This makes it highly accessible while scaling efficiently on cluster hardware.

Consumer / Enthusiast Setup

Perfect for development, debugging, and training "Tiny" or "Small" variants.

• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4080/4090 (16GB+ VRAM)
• Config:
  • Batch Size: 8-16 per GPU
  • Gradient Accumulation: 88+ steps
  • Precision: AMP (fp16/bf16) enabled
• Expected Speed: ~2-4 iters/sec

Research Grade Setup

Required for "Base" or "Large" variants and full 50k+ epoch runs.

• GPU: 4x-8x NVIDIA A100 (80GB) or H100
• Config:
  • Batch Size: 768+
  • Precision: bf16 recommended for recursive stability
• Expected Speed: ~15+ iters/sec (linear scaling via DDP)

TPU Setup (Google Cloud)

For maximum throughput on the Base variant.

• TPU: v5e-8 (8 cores, 16GB HBM per core)
• Config: config_topas_tpu.yaml
  • Batch Size: 1024 per core (8192 effective)
  • Precision: Native bfloat16

# Install TPU dependencies
pip install torch_xla

# Launch training
python train.py --config config_topas_tpu.yaml --tpu

Key TPU optimizations:

• ParallelLoader for async data prefetching
• xm.optimizer_step() for gradient synchronization across cores
• Native bfloat16 precision (no AMP scaler needed)

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Getting Started

1. Installation

git clone https://github.com/Bitterbot-AI/topas-dslpv1.git
cd topas-dslp
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # Linux/Mac
# or: venv\Scripts\activate  # Windows
pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Prepare Data

TOPAS-DSPL uses augmented training data generated from the 400 ARC-AGI training puzzles with D8 dihedral transforms and color permutations.

Data Structure:

data/
├── arc-agi_training_challenges.json     # ARC-AGI training (400 tasks)
├── arc-agi_training_solutions.json      # ARC-AGI training solutions
├── arc-agi_evaluation_challenges.json   # ARC-AGI-2 evaluation (120 tasks)
├── arc-agi_evaluation_solutions.json    # ARC-AGI-2 solutions
└── train/                               # Generated by build_arc_dataset.py
    ├── train__inputs.npy                # [N, 900] input sequences
    ├── train__labels.npy                # [N, 900] label sequences
    ├── train__puzzle_identifiers.npy    # [N] puzzle IDs
    ├── train__puzzle_indices.npy        # Puzzle → example mapping
    ├── train__group_indices.npy         # Group → puzzle mapping
    └── dataset.json                     # Metadata

Setup:

The ARC-AGI-2 evaluation set (120 tasks) and ARC-AGI training set (400 tasks) are included in the data/ folder.

# Generate augmented training dataset (1000 augmentations per puzzle)
python -m dataset.build_arc_dataset \
    --input-prefix data/arc-agi \
    --output-dir data \
    --subsets training \
    --num-aug 1000

This creates ~1M training examples with D8 dihedral transforms + color permutations. All I/O pairs within a puzzle share the same augmentation to preserve demo consistency.

3. Training

# Single GPU (Consumer)
python train.py --config config_topas.yaml

# Multi-GPU (Research)
torchrun --nproc_per_node=4 train.py --config config_topas.yaml

4. Evaluation (with TTT)

Run the specialized evaluator with Test-Time Training:

python topas_evaluator.py \
  --checkpoint output_topas/checkpoints/best_model.pt \
  --challenges data/arc-agi_evaluation_challenges.json \
  --solutions data/arc-agi_evaluation_solutions.json \
  --ttt-steps 10 \
  --num-aug 8 \
  --output submission.json

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Configuration

Key parameters in config_topas.yaml:

model:
  d_model: 480           # Hidden dimension
  n_heads: 8             # Attention heads
  H_cycles: 3            # Outer recursion cycles
  L_cycles: 4            # Inner recursion cycles per H
  L_layers: 2            # Layers per core

training:
  batch_size: 16         # Local batch size
  accumulation_steps: 88 # Effective batch = 16 × 88 = 1408
  epochs_per_iter: 10    # Passes through data per epoch
  learning_rate: 0.0001

regularization:
  ema: true              # Exponential Moving Average
  ema_decay: 0.999
  stream_dropout: 0.1    # Forces Canvas to use Logic instructions

Model Variants

Note on reported results: The 24% solve rate on ARC-AGI-2 public evaluation was achieved using the Base (~24M) configuration with d_model=480. The repository defaults to this configuration.

Implementation Notes

Dimension Choice: The paper describes an idealized architecture with d_model=512, but during final training runs we settled on d_model=480 which allows clean head division (480/8=60) and optimizes GPU memory utilization.

Parameter Growth: The ~24M count in Base reflects the dual-stream architecture (separate Logic + Canvas cores) and the depth required for stable recursive loops.

Optimizer Deviation: A critical change from the paper is the migration from AdamW to the MuonClip optimizer (Momentum-Orthogonalized updates). This significantly stabilized gradients through deep recursive steps compared to vanilla AdamW.

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Monitoring

Training logs to TensorBoard:

tensorboard --logdir output_topas/logs

Key metrics:

• train/loss: Should decrease steadily
• train/accuracy: Pixel-level accuracy (expect 70-100% mid-training)
• eval/accuracy: Full puzzle solve rate

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Project Structure

topas_dslp/
├── config_topas.yaml      # GPU training configuration
├── config_topas_tpu.yaml  # TPU training configuration
├── train.py               # Main training script
├── topas_dslp_model.py    # TOPAS-DSPL model architecture
├── topas_evaluator.py     # TTT + TTA evaluation
├── logic_core.py          # Logic Stream transformer
├── canvas_core.py         # Canvas Stream CNN/NCA
├── puzzle_dataset.py      # ARC data loading
├── visualization.py       # Grid visualization utilities
├── logger.py              # TensorBoard logging
├── ema.py                 # Exponential Moving Average
├── muonclip.py            # MuonClip optimizer
├── dataset/               # Dataset building utilities
│   ├── build_arc_dataset.py  # Augmentation + serialization
│   └── common.py             # Dihedral transforms
└── data/                  # Training data directory

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Theoretical Background

The Synthesis

DSPL synthesizes insights from two paradigms:

Key Insight

HRM fails because its separation is temporal (Fast/Slow), which is an imperfect proxy for the true functional separation needed (Rule/State). TRM fails on ARC-AGI-2 because it collapses Rule and State into a single vector, causing "compositional drift."

DSPL implements functional separation: the Logic Stream maintains the algorithm while the Canvas Stream maintains the execution state—mirroring the Turing machine's separation of Program from Memory Tape.

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References & Citation

If you use this codebase in your research, please cite:

The Dual-Stream Programmatic Learner (DSPL)

Foundations of the Bicameral Latent Space and dynamic conditioning.

Read on Zenodo

The TOPAS Architecture

The complete Neuro-Symbolic Hybrid Architecture specification.

Read on Zenodo

@misc{gil2025dspl,
  title={The Dual-Stream Programmatic Learner},
  author={Gil, Victor Michael},
  year={2025},
  publisher={Zenodo},
  doi={10.5281/zenodo.17834542},
  url={https://zenodo.org/records/17834542}
}

@misc{gil2025topas,
  title={TOPAS: Neuro-Symbolic Hybrid Architecture},
  author={Gil, Victor Michael},
  year={2025},
  publisher={Zenodo},
  doi={10.5281/zenodo.17683673},
  url={https://zenodo.org/records/17683673}
}

Foundational Works

• Hierarchical Reasoning Model (HRM) - Wang et al., 2025
• Tiny Recursive Models (TRM) - Jolicoeur-Martineau, 2025
• ARC-AGI Benchmark - Chollet, 2019

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Acknowledgments

• Tiny Recursive Models (TRM): For the proof that "Less is More" in recursive reasoning
• ARC Prize Foundation: For providing the ultimate benchmark for General Intelligence
• TRM Codebase: For data augmentation pipeline and sparse embedding implementation

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License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.