Abstract

Analog in-memory computing (AIMC) offers substantial efficiency gains for transformer inference but introduces hardware-induced noise that can distort attention behavior. Prior studies primarily focus on AIMC evaluations for vision tasks and CNN-based models. They largely overlook how hardware-induced noise perturbs internal attention dynamics in NLP models. In this work, we present the first fine-grained analysis of analog vulnerability in pretrained transformers, examining projection submodules, attention heads, and layer-wise dynamics across multiple NLP tasks. Results show that query (Q), key (K), and value (V) projections are the most sensitive components, while feed-forward layers remain comparatively robust. Also, analog noise yields depth-dependent degradation in higher layers, leading to scattered attention and disrupted token routing. This pre-deployment analysis mitigates potential resource misuse before physical deployment and offers practical guidance for designing noise-resilient analog NLP transformers.