提出零锁训练法,让边缘设备高效微调大模型。
ZeroLock: Concurrent Memory-Efficient LLM Training via Modular Update Decoupling

- 用局部目标解耦模块更新,摆脱反向传播依赖。
- 内存降低26.5%,吞吐提升4.9%,理论收敛率接近反向传播。
- 适合资源受限的边缘设备,尤其隐私敏感场景。
大型语言模型(LLM)在边缘设备上微调可在保护隐私的同时适配特定场景数据。尽管现有研究采用流水线并行缓解边缘设备的存储与算力限制,但普遍依赖反向传播(BP)训练,存在更新锁定的根本缺陷,导致严重吞吐和内存瓶颈。本文提出一种无反向传播的算法ZeroLock,通过局部目标构造将模型更新解耦为独立块更新,打破BP的更新锁定,从而在算法层面提升吞吐、降低激活存储带来的内存开销。据我们所知,这是首个针对一般模型分块情况下的局部目标构造方法提供理论框架的工作,将局部目标映射到全局目标。证明了ZeroLock具有$ ilde{igcal{O}}(1/ ext{sqrt}{T})$的收敛速率,仅比BP多出多项式对数因子。设计了配套系统并构建真实原型,集成早转发与故障恢复等技术以实现高效鲁棒部署。原型实验显示,相比基于BP的基线,ZeroLock内存减少26.5%,吞吐提升4.9%。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language model (LLM) fine-tuning at the edge adapts the model to scenario-specific data while preserving privacy. Although existing studies proposed pipeline parallelism to address the limited memory and computing resources of edge devices, they commonly rely on backpropagation (BP) training, which has a fundamental limitation of update locking and could experience severe throughput and memory bottlenecks. In this work, we propose a BP-free algorithm, called ZeroLock, that decouples the model updates into independent chunk updates by local objective construction. It breaks the update locking of BP and hence can improve throughput at the algorithm level and lower memory usage by reducing activation storage. To the best of our knowledge, we provide the first theoretical framework for such local objective construction-based approaches under general model chunk division by mapping local objectives to the global objective. We prove that ZeroLock has a convergence rate of $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(1/\sqrt{T})$, which differs from BP only by polylogarithmic factors. We design a system for ZeroLock and build real-world prototypes, incorporating techniques such as early forwarding and failure recovery for efficient and robust implementation. Experiments on the prototype show that compared to BP-based baselines, ZeroLock reduces the memory by 26.5% and improves throughput by 4.9%.
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