arXiv:2512.09972cs.LGcs.CL2025-12

用异步贝叶斯优化,高效生成不同性能-成本权衡的LLM合并模型。

AP-BMM: Approximating Capability-Cost Pareto Sets of LLMs via Asynchronous Prior-Guided Bayesian Model Merging

  • 通过源模型参数与激活差异引导搜索,提升合并效率。
  • 在固定评估预算下,帕累托前沿覆盖更广,超体积更高。
  • 异步评估+候选池轻量排序,显著提升显卡利用率。

大语言模型服务需提供一系列涵盖不同性能-成本权衡的模型以满足多样用户需求。模型合并为构建此类模型家族提供了可行路径,通过融合推理增强模型与指令微调模型实现。相比模型级合并,逐层合并可通过为各层分配不同权重,实现更精细的性能-成本调控。然而,其面临两大挑战:逐层搜索空间高维,且现有方法极少利用源模型中的有效信号;此外,大模型评估耗时波动大,同步批量优化常因等待慢任务导致GPU闲置。为此,本文提出异步先验引导的贝叶斯模型合并(AP-BMM),将逐层合并建模为多目标优化问题,以逼近帕累托最优模型集合。AP-BMM利用源模型间参数与激活差异指导早期搜索,采用异步感知贝叶斯优化,通过异步评估最大化GPU利用率,并基于待评估候选感知选择高质量样本,结合轻量级排序对大规模候选池进行筛选,提升帕累托前沿覆盖率。在固定评估预算下,相比同步逐层合并与代表性模型级合并方法,AP-BMM实现更高的超体积(HV)与更广的帕累托前沿覆盖,同时显著降低实际运行时间。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

LLM services need to offer a family of models spanning different capability--cost trade-offs to accommodate diverse user preferences. Model merging offers a practical way to construct such a model family by combining a reasoning-enhanced model with an instruction-tuned model. Compared with model-level merging, layer-wise merging offers finer control over the capability--cost trade-off by assigning different merge weights to individual layers. However, it introduces two practical challenges: the layer-wise search space is high-dimensional, and existing methods rarely exploit informative signals from the source models; moreover, the highly variable runtime of LLM evaluations makes synchronous batch optimization inefficient by leaving GPU resources idle while waiting for slow evaluations. To address these challenges, we propose Asynchronous Prior-Guided Bayesian Model Merging (AP-BMM), which formulates layer-wise merging as a multi-objective optimization problem to approximate a Pareto set of merged LLMs, yielding a family of Pareto-optimal merged models with diverse capability--cost trade-offs. AP-BMM leverages parameter and activation discrepancies between the source models to guide the early layer-wise search, employs asynchronous pending-aware Bayesian optimization to maximize GPU utilization through asynchronous evaluations and to select high-quality candidates via pending awareness, and applies lightweight ranking over an oversized candidate pool to improve Pareto-front coverage. Under fixed evaluation budgets, AP-BMM achieves higher hypervolume (HV) and broader Pareto-front coverage than synchronous layer-wise and representative model-level merging methods, while reducing wall-clock time through higher GPU utilization.

模型合并贝叶斯优化性能-成本权衡LLM

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