小模型训练后可高效扩增到大模型,省去大量调参成本。
$μ$pscaling small models: Principled warm starts and hyperparameter transfer
- 基于理论推导的权重迁移与噪声缩放,实现稳定扩增。
- 在真实数据集上验证,扩增后模型性能接近直接训练结果。
- 适合需要快速部署多种规模模型的研究与工业场景。
现代大规模神经网络常以不同尺寸发布,以适应不同的推理预算。为提升效率,近期工作探索了模型扩增:从已训练的小模型初始化大模型以加速收敛。然而该方法对需在目标扩增模型尺寸上调优的超参数敏感,直接调优成本过高。目前尚不清楚在小模型上调参并依缩放定律外推是否合理。本文针对基于宽度的模型扩增,提出原理性方法与高效超参数调优策略。受μP与任意维架构启发,我们引入一种通用扩增方法,类似Net2Net地复制并扰动权重,但采用理论支撑的、与宽度相关的扰动噪声和优化器超参数缩放。首先证明:零扰动下,扩增模型在整个训练过程中函数等价于基模型。其次,将μP理论拓展至无限宽极限,建立扩增模型的超参数转移机制,显著降低调优成本。我们在真实数据集与架构上实证表明该方法有效。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Modern large-scale neural networks are often trained and released in multiple sizes to accommodate diverse inference budgets. To improve efficiency, recent work has explored model upscaling: initializing larger models from trained smaller ones to accelerate convergence. However, this method can be sensitive to hyperparameters that need to be tuned at the target upscaled model size, which is prohibitively costly to do directly. It remains unclear whether tuning hyperparameters on smaller models and extrapolating via scaling laws is sound in this setting. We address this with principled approaches to width-based upscaling and efficient hyperparameter tuning in this setting. Motivated by $μ$P and any-dimensional architectures, we introduce a general upscaling method that, like Net2Net, copies and perturbs weights, but uses theoretically grounded, width-dependent scalings for the perturbation noise and optimizer hyperparameters. First, we prove that under zero perturbation, the upscaled model is functionally equivalent to the base model throughout training. Second, we extend the $μ$P theory to enable infinite-width limit analysis and establish hyperparameter transfer for upscaled models, greatly reducing the tuning cost. We empirically demonstrate that this method is effective on realistic datasets and architectures.
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