TeamFormer用并行结构实现快速高效的Transformer,突破深度依赖瓶颈。
TeamFormer: Shallow Parallel Transformers with Progressive Approximation
- 将Transformer重构为闭式函数逼近器,以并行分支实现层间协作
- 相比ViT,训练速度提升3.30倍,模型压缩达15.07倍
- 适合资源受限设备部署,支持持续学习与多卡加速
主流‘越深越好’理念推动了ResNet和Transformer等深度架构的发展,但深层模型带来训练慢、推理延迟高、难以在资源受限设备上运行等问题。为此,我们提出TeamFormer,一种浅层并行Transformer架构,实现结构与计算上的真正并行。通过将标准Transformer形式化为闭式函数逼近器,理论分析表明其性能依赖于层间协作带来的渐进逼近,而非深度本身。传统深层Transformer通过序列结构强制协作,而我们证明该协作无需依赖序列结构。TeamFormer通过并行分支组织,算法性地确保每条新分支进一步降低前序分支的损失,实现更快收敛。大量实验验证其有效性:在多个任务上优于ViT;支持最高15.07倍模型压缩;具备自适应连续学习扩展能力。多GPU部署实验显示,相较FairScale等常用并行方案,速度提升3.30倍。这些成果源于基于泛化逼近定理的闭式变压器公式,不仅解释了‘深度崇拜’现象,也为设计高效变压器架构开辟新路径。源码将在接受后公开。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The widespread 'deeper is better' philosophy has driven the creation of architectures like ResNet and Transformer, which achieve high performance by stacking numerous layers. However, increasing model depth comes with challenges such as longer training times, higher inference latency, and impracticality on resource-constrained devices. To address these issues, we propose TeamFormer, a shallow Transformer architecture designed for true parallelism in both structure and computation. By formulating standard Transformers as function approximators in closed-form, our theoretical analysis shows that their performance relies on inter-layer collaboration for progressive approximation, rather than depth itself. While deep Transformers enforce this collaboration through sequential designs, we demonstrate that such collaboration is not inherently tied to sequential structures. TeamFormer removes the sequential constraint by organizing layers into parallel branches, enforcing inter-layer collaboration algorithmically. Specifically, we implement progressive approximation, ensuring that each new branch further reduces the loss from preceding branches, enabling faster convergence. Extensive experiments validate TeamFormer's effectiveness, outperforming standard Transformers like ViT. Moreover, TeamFormer supports up to 15.07x model compression and facilitates model expansion for adaptive continuous learning. Experimental results on multi-GPU deployment demonstrate that TeamFormer is 3.30x faster than widely used parallelism solutions such as FairScale. These advancements stem from our closed-form formulation of Transformers based on the Universal Approximation Theorem, which not only explains the ``depth belief'' but also opens new avenues for designing efficient Transformer architectures. Source code: https://(open-upon-acceptance)
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