arXiv:2609.07666cs.LGmath.OC2026-09

无需调学习率,用子空间信任域法高效微调大模型。

MpSub: A Momentum $p$-Dimensional Subspace Trust-Region Method for Derivative-Free Fine-Tuning of Large Language Models

  • 在低维子空间内结合历史动量与随机采样,用中心差分估计梯度。
  • 8400次前向传播下,两个模型测试准确率分别达67.3%和69.0%,媲美调参版MeZO。
  • 适合无梯度微调场景,尤其适用于资源受限的大模型适配。

大语言模型全参数微调因反向传播需存储激活值和梯度而带来高昂内存开销。零阶优化通过损失评估估算更新方向避免此问题,但现有方法对每个模型和任务均需敏感调参学习率。本文提出动量p维子空间信任域方法(MpSub):每轮迭代在p维子空间中搜索,一个方向保留最近有效步的历史动量,其余方向通过新鲜随机采样探索;子空间梯度由中心差分估计,试验步由线性信任域模型计算,信任域半径根据预测与实际损失下降的一致性自适应调整,从而消除学习率。微调时,迭代内评估共享小批量,方向就地从种子再生,仅使用前向传播。对于在非正交高斯方向下的光滑确定性目标,本文界定了有限差分误差,量化了子空间捕获的梯度能量,并证明在受保护的半径更新下,几乎必然有极限状态梯度范数趋于零。在8400次训练目标前向传播预算下,对OPT-125M和OPT-350M在CommitmentBank上进行微调,采用相同预设参数,MpSub在三组随机种子下平均测试准确率分别为0.673和0.690,与调参版MeZO(0.685)相当,且无需任何学习率搜索。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Full-parameter fine-tuning of large language models has substantial memory costs because backpropagation stores activations and gradients. Zeroth-order optimization avoids this by estimating update directions from loss evaluations, but existing methods require tuning a sensitive learning rate for each model and task. We propose the momentum $p$-dimensional subspace trust-region method (MpSub). At each iteration, MpSub searches within a $p$-dimensional subspace: one direction preserves historical momentum from the most recent accepted step, while the remaining directions explore via fresh random sampling. The subspace gradient is estimated by central differences, a trial step is computed from a linear trust-region model, and the trust-region radius adapts according to the agreement between predicted and observed loss reduction, eliminating the learning rate. For LLM fine-tuning, evaluations within an iteration share a minibatch, and directions are regenerated in place from seeds, using forward passes alone. For smooth deterministic objectives under unorthogonalized Gaussian directions, we bound the finite-difference error, quantify gradient energy captured by the subspace, and prove that $\lim_{k\to\infty} \|\nabla f(x_k)\|_2 = 0$ almost surely under a safeguarded radius update. Under a matched budget of 8,400 training-objective forward passes, we fine-tune OPT-125M and OPT-350M on CommitmentBank. With the same preset parameters at both model sizes, MpSub attains mean test accuracies of 0.673 and 0.690 over three seeds, matching tuned MeZO (0.685) without any learning-rate search.

无梯度优化大模型微调信任域子空间

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