EF21 with Bells & Whistles: Six Algorithmic Extensions of Modern Error Feedback

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Fatkhullin, Ilyas, Sokolov, Igor, Gorbunov, Eduard, Li, Zhize, Richtárik, Peter
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2021
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author Fatkhullin, Ilyas
Sokolov, Igor
Gorbunov, Eduard
Li, Zhize
Richtárik, Peter
author_facet Fatkhullin, Ilyas
Sokolov, Igor
Gorbunov, Eduard
Li, Zhize
Richtárik, Peter
contents First proposed by Seide (2014) as a heuristic, error feedback (EF) is a very popular mechanism for enforcing convergence of distributed gradient-based optimization methods enhanced with communication compression strategies based on the application of contractive compression operators. However, existing theory of EF relies on very strong assumptions (e.g., bounded gradients), and provides pessimistic convergence rates (e.g., while the best known rate for EF in the smooth nonconvex regime, and when full gradients are compressed, is $O(1/T^{2/3})$, the rate of gradient descent in the same regime is $O(1/T)$). Recently, Richtárik et al. (2021) proposed a new error feedback mechanism, EF21, based on the construction of a Markov compressor induced by a contractive compressor. EF21 removes the aforementioned theoretical deficiencies of EF and at the same time works better in practice. In this work we propose six practical extensions of EF21, all supported by strong convergence theory: partial participation, stochastic approximation, variance reduction, proximal setting, momentum, and bidirectional compression. To the best of our knowledge, several of these techniques have not been previously analyzed in combination with EF, and in cases where prior analysis exists -- such as for bidirectional compression -- our theoretical convergence guarantees significantly improve upon existing results.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2110_03294
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle EF21 with Bells & Whistles: Six Algorithmic Extensions of Modern Error Feedback
Fatkhullin, Ilyas
Sokolov, Igor
Gorbunov, Eduard
Li, Zhize
Richtárik, Peter
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
First proposed by Seide (2014) as a heuristic, error feedback (EF) is a very popular mechanism for enforcing convergence of distributed gradient-based optimization methods enhanced with communication compression strategies based on the application of contractive compression operators. However, existing theory of EF relies on very strong assumptions (e.g., bounded gradients), and provides pessimistic convergence rates (e.g., while the best known rate for EF in the smooth nonconvex regime, and when full gradients are compressed, is $O(1/T^{2/3})$, the rate of gradient descent in the same regime is $O(1/T)$). Recently, Richtárik et al. (2021) proposed a new error feedback mechanism, EF21, based on the construction of a Markov compressor induced by a contractive compressor. EF21 removes the aforementioned theoretical deficiencies of EF and at the same time works better in practice. In this work we propose six practical extensions of EF21, all supported by strong convergence theory: partial participation, stochastic approximation, variance reduction, proximal setting, momentum, and bidirectional compression. To the best of our knowledge, several of these techniques have not been previously analyzed in combination with EF, and in cases where prior analysis exists -- such as for bidirectional compression -- our theoretical convergence guarantees significantly improve upon existing results.
title EF21 with Bells & Whistles: Six Algorithmic Extensions of Modern Error Feedback
topic Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.03294