通过动态调整批次大小,让强化学习在训练后期也能用大批次提升性能。
Scalable Reinforcement Learning via Adaptive Batch Scaling

- 根据策略稳定性动态调节有效批次大小,早期小批保持灵活性,后期大批精准收敛。
- 在ALE基准上,大模型搭配大批次反而表现最佳,打破传统认知。
- 提出行为发散度量指标,量化策略非平稳性,指导批次自适应调节。
传统观点认为大规模训练与强化学习不相容:超过一定阈值后,批次增大通常导致收益递减或性能下降,源于数据分布的固有非平稳性。我们挑战这一观点,发现非平稳性并非固定属性,而是随训练进程演变:早期行为变化剧烈,需小批次以保持可塑性;晚期趋于准平稳,适合大批次实现精确收敛。为此提出自适应批次缩放(ABS),根据策略稳定性动态调整有效批次大小。核心是行为发散度量——通过连续更新间动作层面的变化,量化策略非平稳性,并反比于策略波动性调整批次大小。结合并行化Q网络(PQN)算法,在ALE基准上验证,ABS无缝协调了早期可塑性与晚期稳定收敛。令人惊讶的是,反向传统认知,大模型与大批次组合取得最优性能——此前认为在强化学习中不可实现的规模化行为,现通过自适应批次控制得以解锁。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Conventional wisdom holds that large-batch training is fundamentally incompatible with Reinforcement Learning (RL) - beyond a modest threshold, increasing batch sizes typically yields diminishing returns or performance degradation due to the inherent non-stationarity of the data distribution. We challenge this view by observing that non-stationarity is not a fixed property of RL, but evolves throughout training: early stages exhibit rapid behavioral shifts that demand small batches for plasticity, whereas late stages approach a quasi-stationary regime where large batches enable precise convergence. Motivated by this observation, we propose Adaptive Batch Scaling (ABS), that dynamically adjusts the effective batch size according to the stability of the learning policy. Central to ABS is Behavioral Divergence, a novel metric that quantifies policy non-stationarity by measuring action-level shifts between consecutive updates, which we use to scale batch size inversely to policy volatility. Integrated with the Parallelised Q-Network (PQN) algorithm and evaluated on the ALE benchmark, ABS seamlessly reconciles early-stage plasticity with late-stage stable convergence. Strikingly, contrary to conventional wisdom, our results reveal that the combination of larger networks and larger batch sizes achieves the best performance - a scaling behavior previously thought to be unattainable in RL, now unlocked through adaptive batch control.
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