arXiv:2508.14881cs.LG2025-08NeurIPS被引 5

研究如何在有限算力下高效训练强化学习模型,提升每单位算力的性能。

Compute-Optimal Scaling for Value-Based Deep RL

  • 通过调整模型大小和更新次数与数据量的比例,优化算力分配。
  • 发现小模型用大批次会降低精度,大模型则可有效使用大批次。
  • 提出适用于价值型强化学习的算力最优训练指南,适合算法研究者参考。

随着模型增大和训练成本上升,以算力最优方式扩展训练方法变得愈发重要,即在单位算力下获得最大性能。尽管语言建模中的算力扩展已有深入研究,强化学习(RL)在此方面仍关注不足。本文研究在线、基于价值的深度强化学习的算力扩展问题。该类方法主要存在两个算力分配维度:模型容量与更新-数据比(UTD)。在固定算力预算下,如何在这些维度间分配资源以最大化样本效率?我们的分析揭示了模型大小、批次大小与UTD之间的复杂关系。特别地,我们识别出一种称为TD过拟合的现象:对小模型增加批次大小会迅速损害Q函数精度,但大模型中此现象消失,使其可在大规模下有效使用大批次。我们构建了一个理解该现象的心理模型,并制定选择批次大小与UTD以优化算力使用的指导原则。研究成果为深度强化学习的算力最优扩展提供了扎实起点,类似于监督学习的研究,但针对时序差分学习进行了适配。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

As models grow larger and training them becomes expensive, it becomes increasingly important to scale training recipes not just to larger models and more data, but to do so in a compute-optimal manner that extracts maximal performance per unit of compute. While such scaling has been well studied for language modeling, reinforcement learning (RL) has received less attention in this regard. In this paper, we investigate compute scaling for online, value-based deep RL. These methods present two primary axes for compute allocation: model capacity and the update-to-data (UTD) ratio. Given a fixed compute budget, we ask: how should resources be partitioned across these axes to maximize sample efficiency? Our analysis reveals a nuanced interplay between model size, batch size, and UTD. In particular, we identify a phenomenon we call TD-overfitting: increasing the batch quickly harms Q-function accuracy for small models, but this effect is absent in large models, enabling effective use of large batch size at scale. We provide a mental model for understanding this phenomenon and build guidelines for choosing batch size and UTD to optimize compute usage. Our findings provide a grounded starting point for compute-optimal scaling in deep RL, mirroring studies in supervised learning but adapted to TD learning.

强化学习算力优化深度学习

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