对比18个训练算法,发现非对角预处理和无超参方法能显著加速神经网络训练。
Accelerating Neural Network Training: An Analysis of the AlgoPerf Competition
- 采用分布式Shampoo算法实现非对角预处理,优于传统Adam方法。
- 无超参的Schedule Free AdamW在多个任务中表现最佳,收敛更快。
- 顶尖算法对不同模型和数据集变化有强鲁棒性,适合实际部署。
AlgoPerf: Training Algorithms 竞赛旨在评估仅通过改进训练算法实现的实际训练加速效果。外部调优规则要求提交者提供与工作负载无关的超参数搜索空间,自调优规则则要求完全无超参数。所有提交方案均在固定硬件上,针对多种深度学习任务进行时间到结果的对比。本文报告首届AlgoPerf竞赛结果,共收到10支团队的18个参赛方案。研究发现:(1) 外部调优规则下获胜方案使用分布式Shampoo算法,证明非对角预处理在墙钟时间上优于Adam等主流方法;(2) 自调优规则下获胜方案基于Schedule Free AdamW,展现出完全无超参数训练算法的新高度;(3) 顶级方案对工作负载变化具有惊人鲁棒性。同时讨论了确保算法公平比较所面临的工程挑战。结果表明当前已有显著进展,但仍存在巨大优化空间。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The goal of the AlgoPerf: Training Algorithms competition is to evaluate practical speed-ups in neural network training achieved solely by improving the underlying training algorithms. In the external tuning ruleset, submissions must provide workload-agnostic hyperparameter search spaces, while in the self-tuning ruleset they must be completely hyperparameter-free. In both rulesets, submissions are compared on time-to-result across multiple deep learning workloads, training on fixed hardware. This paper presents the inaugural AlgoPerf competition's results, which drew 18 diverse submissions from 10 teams. Our investigation reveals several key findings: (1) The winning submission in the external tuning ruleset, using Distributed Shampoo, demonstrates the effectiveness of non-diagonal preconditioning over popular methods like Adam, even when compared on wall-clock runtime. (2) The winning submission in the self-tuning ruleset, based on the Schedule Free AdamW algorithm, demonstrates a new level of effectiveness for completely hyperparameter-free training algorithms. (3) The top-scoring submissions were surprisingly robust to workload changes. We also discuss the engineering challenges encountered in ensuring a fair comparison between different training algorithms. These results highlight both the significant progress so far, and the considerable room for further improvements.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。