arXiv:2410.17770cs.LGcond-mat.dis-nn2024-10NeurIPS被引 17

小奇异值也存信息,能影响模型性能,别只看大值。

Small Singular Values Matter: A Random Matrix Analysis of Transformer Models

  • 用随机矩阵理论分析权重奇异值,发现小值也有学习信号。
  • 移除偏离随机性的奇异值,语言困惑度上升远超移除中间值。
  • 适合关注模型压缩、剪枝与低秩结构的研究者。

本文通过随机矩阵理论(RMT)分析预训练Transformer模型中权重矩阵的奇异值谱,将与RMT一致视为随机性证据,偏离则表明学习存在。令人惊讶的是,不仅最大奇异值出现显著偏离(通常的异常值),最小奇异值同样表现出强烈偏离。奇异向量与激活协方差矩阵的特征向量在偏离区域有显著重叠,说明数据中的重要方向由大小奇异值共同捕捉。实证表明:移除偏离RMT的奇异值会使语言模型困惑度显著上升,远超移除谱体部分;微调后,最小十分之一的奇异值甚至成为影响最大的第三部分。为此提出线性随机矩阵模型解释小奇异值为何携带更多信息。研究揭示了奇异值谱低端被忽视的重要性,为基于SVD的模型剪枝与压缩提供理论与实践指导。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

This work analyzes singular-value spectra of weight matrices in pretrained transformer models to understand how information is stored at both ends of the spectrum. Using Random Matrix Theory (RMT) as a zero information hypothesis, we associate agreement with RMT as evidence of randomness and deviations as evidence for learning. Surprisingly, we observe pronounced departures from RMT not only among the largest singular values -- the usual outliers -- but also among the smallest ones. A comparison of the associated singular vectors with the eigenvectors of the activation covariance matrices shows that there is considerable overlap wherever RMT is violated. Thus, significant directions in the data are captured by small singular values and their vectors as well as by the large ones. We confirm this empirically: zeroing out the singular values that deviate from RMT raises language-model perplexity far more than removing values from the bulk, and after fine-tuning the smallest decile can be the third most influential part of the spectrum. To explain how vectors linked to small singular values can carry more information than those linked to larger values, we propose a linear random-matrix model. Our findings highlight the overlooked importance of the low end of the spectrum and provide theoretical and practical guidance for SVD-based pruning and compression of large language models.

奇异值分析模型压缩Transformer随机矩阵

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