SPO改进大模型策略优化,让训练更稳定高效。
Single-stream Policy Optimization
- 用持续追踪的值函数替代分组基准,避免学习信号丢失
- 在5个数学基准上平均提升3.4个百分点,最高增益7.3点
- 无需分组设计,适合长序列和工具调用场景,适合追求效率的研究者
我们从单流视角重新审视大语言模型的策略梯度优化。现有基于分组的方法如GRPO虽通过动态基线降低方差,但存在分组退化导致学习信号消失、同步瓶颈影响扩展性等关键问题。本文提出单流策略优化(SPO),通过持久的KL自适应值跟踪器替代每组基线,并全局归一化优势值,为每个样本提供稳定低方差的学习信号。由于无需分组,SPO显著提升吞吐量,适用于生成时间波动大的长序列或工具集成任务。此外,持续值跟踪器天然支持优先采样,实现自适应课程学习。在Qwen3-8B上实验表明,SPO收敛更平稳,准确率高于GRPO,且避免了退化分组的计算浪费。消融实验证明其优势源于基线估计与优势归一化的合理设计。在五个高难度数学基准上,SPO相较GRPO平均提升maj@32达+3.4个百分点,其中BRUMO 25 +7.3 pp,AIME 25 +4.4 pp,HMMT 25 +3.3 pp,且在pass@$k$各$k$值下均保持一致相对增益。SPO的成功挑战了为强化学习算法增加附加复杂性的趋势,强调回归基本原理才是推动大模型推理进步的关键路径。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
We revisit policy-gradient optimization for Large Language Models (LLMs) from a single-stream perspective. Prevailing group-based methods like GRPO reduce variance with on-the-fly baselines but suffer from critical flaws: frequent degenerate groups erase learning signals, and synchronization barriers hinder scalability. We introduce Single-stream Policy Optimization (SPO), which eliminates these issues by design. SPO replaces per-group baselines with a persistent, KL-adaptive value tracker and normalizes advantages globally across the batch, providing a stable, low-variance learning signal for every sample. Being group-free, SPO enables higher throughput and scales effectively in long-horizon or tool-integrated settings where generation times vary. Furthermore, the persistent value tracker naturally enables an adaptive curriculum via prioritized sampling. Experiments using Qwen3-8B show that SPO converges more smoothly and attains higher accuracy than GRPO, while eliminating computation wasted on degenerate groups. Ablation studies confirm that SPO's gains stem from its principled approach to baseline estimation and advantage normalization, offering a more robust and efficient path for LLM reasoning. Across five hard math benchmarks with Qwen3 8B, SPO improves the average maj@32 by +3.4 percentage points (pp) over GRPO, driven by substantial absolute point gains on challenging datasets, including +7.3 pp on BRUMO 25, +4.4 pp on AIME 25, +3.3 pp on HMMT 25, and achieves consistent relative gain in pass@$k$ across the evaluated $k$ values. SPO's success challenges the prevailing trend of adding incidental complexity to RL algorithms, highlighting a path where fundamental principles, not architectural workarounds, drive the next wave of progress in LLM reasoning.
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。