arXiv:2605.25395cs.LGmath.OC2026-05被引 1

用平滑更新方向改进加速优化,提升深度学习训练稳定性。

EMA-Nesterov: Stabilizing Nesterov's Lookahead for Accelerated Deep Learning Optimization

论文配图:EMA-Nesterov: Stabilizing Nesterov's Lookahead for Accelerated Deep Learning Optimization
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用指数移动平均替代原始更新方向,降低噪声干扰。
  • 在语言模型预训练中优于传统方法,适配多种优化器。
  • 理论保持加速收敛性,适合追求稳定高效的训练场景。

基于Lookahead的加速方法(如Nesterov动量)广泛用于优化,但在深度学习训练中常因随机梯度噪声和非凸损失曲面而不可靠。传统Lookahead依赖短期更新信号(如连续迭代间的差值),这些信号本身噪声大,易导致不稳定外推方向。本文从轨迹视角重新审视Nesterov加速,认为深度学习中的有效加速应捕捉优化轨迹的低频趋势,而非外推高噪声的一步更新。为此,提出EMA-Nesterov:将标准Nesterov的前瞻方向替换为参数更新的指数移动平均(EMA),通过低通滤波机制稳定捕捉训练轨迹演化趋势,同时保留EMA的几何加权自适应特性。理论证明,EMA-Nesterov在凸问题中仍保持与Nesterov加速梯度法相当的加速收敛率。实证表明,在语言模型预训练任务中,该方法可广泛适配Adam、SOAP、Muon等基础优化器,以及在优化基准上表现卓越的复杂优化器(NanoGPT)。相比先前的Lookahead方法,EMA-Nesterov避免了短时前瞻的不稳定性与长时前瞻的非自适应性,实现更优性能。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Lookahead-based acceleration methods, such as Nesterov's momentum, are widely used in optimization, but they often become unreliable in deep learning training mainly due to stochastic gradient noise and non-convex loss landscapes. In particular, standard lookahead relies on short-horizon update signals (e.g., differences between consecutive iterates), which are inherently noisy and can lead to unstable extrapolation directions. This work revisits Nesterov's acceleration from a trajectory perspective and argues that effective acceleration in deep learning should harness the low-frequency trends of optimization trajectories rather than extrapolating noisy one-step updates. Leveraging this insight, we propose EMA-Nesterov, a simple modification that replaces the standard Nesterov's lookahead direction with an exponential moving average (EMA) of parameter updates. This yields a stabilized lookahead direction that captures and harnesses the evolving trend of the training trajectory through a low-pass filter, while remaining adaptive to progressive changes via the geometric weighting structure of EMA. We show that EMA-Nesterov retains a theoretical accelerated convergence rate in convex problems that is analogous to Nesterov's accelerated gradient method. Furthermore, we provide empirical evidence on language model pre-training to verify that EMA-Nesterov is broadly applicable across a range of fine-tuned base optimizers, including Adam, SOAP, Muon, as well as complex optimizers that achieve state-of-the-art performance on optimization benchmarks (NanoGPT). Compared to prior lookahead methods, EMA-Nesterov achieves better performance by avoiding the instability of short-horizon lookahead and the non-adaptivity of long-horizon lookahead.

优化算法加速训练深度学习

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