<blockquote>
<p>are the LSTM cells on a given row all the same cell, with time flowing forward from left to right?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes this is correct</p>
<p>The x-axis on this figure is basically the <strong>time</strong> axis. Essentially all pink boxes in the same row are <strong>the same</strong> LSTM cell, with different inputs from the same sequence. At each timestep, the cell takes an input and produces an output which is fed to the next layer. At the 8-th layer, the outputs over all timesteps are inputted at the same time to the attention layer.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-11-24T15:39:14.460Z
2020-11-24T15:39:14.460Z
Djib2011
<p>I'm trying to read <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.08144.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this</a> paper describing Google's LSTM architecture for machine translation. It features this diagram on page 4:</p>
<p><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/B9wi6.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>I'm interested in the encoder block, on the left. Apparently, the pink and green cells are LSTMs. However, I can't tell if the x-axis is space or time. That is, are the LSTM cells on a given row all <em>the same</em> cell, with time flowing forward from left to right? The diagram on the next page in the paper seems to suggest that.</p>

<neural-networks><deep-learning><long-short-term-memory><papers><google>
Does this diagram represent several LSTMs, or one through several timesteps?
Jack M
# Does this diagram represent several LSTMs, or one through several timesteps?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-11-23)

I'm trying to read [this](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.08144.pdf) paper describing Google's LSTM architecture for machine translation. It features this diagram on page 4:

![](https://i.sstatic.net/B9wi6.png)

I'm interested in the encoder block, on the left. Apparently, the pink and green cells are LSTMs. However, I can't tell if the x-axis is space or time. That is, are the LSTM cells on a given row all *the same* cell, with time flowing forward from left to right? The diagram on the next page in the paper seems to suggest that.

**Tags:** neural-networks, deep-learning, long-short-term-memory, papers, google


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2020-11-24. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

> are the LSTM cells on a given row all the same cell, with time flowing forward from left to right?

Yes this is correct

The x-axis on this figure is basically the **time** axis. Essentially all pink boxes in the same row are **the same** LSTM cell, with different inputs from the same sequence. At each timestep, the cell takes an input and produces an output which is fed to the next layer. At the 8-th layer, the outputs over all timesteps are inputted at the same time to the attention layer.


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