Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mastromattei, Michele, Zanzotto, Fabio Massimo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03142
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909219566911488
author Mastromattei, Michele
Zanzotto, Fabio Massimo
author_facet Mastromattei, Michele
Zanzotto, Fabio Massimo
contents Neural network pruning has become increasingly crucial due to the complexity of these models and their widespread use in various fields. Existing pruning algorithms often suffer from limitations such as architecture specificity, excessive complexity and reliance on demanding calculations, rendering them impractical for real-world applications. This paper introduces KEN: a straightforward, universal and unstructured pruning algorithm based on Kernel Density Estimation (KDE). KEN aims to construct optimized transformers by selectively preserving the most significant parameters while restoring others to their pre-training state. This strategy preserves model performance while enabling storage of only the optimized subnetwork, leading to substantial memory savings. Extensive evaluations across seven different LLMs demonstrate that KEN achieves equal or better performance than their original unpruned versions, with a minimum parameter reduction of 25%. Furthermore, in-depth comparisons with established pruning and PEFT algorithms confirm KEN effectiveness. We further introduce KEN$_{viz}$, an explainable tool that visualizes the optimized model composition achieved by KEN from different points of view.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_03142
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Less is KEN: a Universal and Simple Non-Parametric Pruning Algorithm for Large Language Models
Mastromattei, Michele
Zanzotto, Fabio Massimo
Machine Learning
Computation and Language
Neural network pruning has become increasingly crucial due to the complexity of these models and their widespread use in various fields. Existing pruning algorithms often suffer from limitations such as architecture specificity, excessive complexity and reliance on demanding calculations, rendering them impractical for real-world applications. This paper introduces KEN: a straightforward, universal and unstructured pruning algorithm based on Kernel Density Estimation (KDE). KEN aims to construct optimized transformers by selectively preserving the most significant parameters while restoring others to their pre-training state. This strategy preserves model performance while enabling storage of only the optimized subnetwork, leading to substantial memory savings. Extensive evaluations across seven different LLMs demonstrate that KEN achieves equal or better performance than their original unpruned versions, with a minimum parameter reduction of 25%. Furthermore, in-depth comparisons with established pruning and PEFT algorithms confirm KEN effectiveness. We further introduce KEN$_{viz}$, an explainable tool that visualizes the optimized model composition achieved by KEN from different points of view.
title Less is KEN: a Universal and Simple Non-Parametric Pruning Algorithm for Large Language Models
topic Machine Learning
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03142