Building LLMs like LEGO : two-dimensional architecture reassembly of large language models

Abstract

Pretrained large language models (LLMs) are typically reused as indivisible artifacts, adapted, merged, or ensembled as a whole. In this study, we show that LLMs can instead be structurally recomposed as modular building blocks to create new architectures without access to original training data. We introduce architecture-level reassembly as a new reuse paradigm, in which Transformer blocks from heterogeneous models are treated as reusable components. This idea is formalized through a two-dimensional reassembly space that supports both vertical recombination across depth and horizontal composition within layers. To make this space tractable, we propose a chromosome-based architectural encoding and perform a bi-level multi-objective evolutionary optimization over vertical structure and horizontal composition. To resolve representation incompatibility across heterogeneous blocks, we introduce lightweight glue layers trained via data-free knowledge distillation, enabling valid information flow without modifying pretrained parameters. Our results demonstrate that architecture-level reassembly unlocks a new dimension of flexibility in model reuse, pointing toward a modular and evolutionary view of LLM design.