Scaling Laws and Compute-Optimal Training Beyond Fixed Training Durations

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hägele, Alexander, Bakouch, Elie, Kosson, Atli, Allal, Loubna Ben, Von Werra, Leandro, Jaggi, Martin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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_version_ 1866914975059017728
author Hägele, Alexander
Bakouch, Elie
Kosson, Atli
Allal, Loubna Ben
Von Werra, Leandro
Jaggi, Martin
author_facet Hägele, Alexander
Bakouch, Elie
Kosson, Atli
Allal, Loubna Ben
Von Werra, Leandro
Jaggi, Martin
contents Scale has become a main ingredient in obtaining strong machine learning models. As a result, understanding a model's scaling properties is key to effectively designing both the right training setup as well as future generations of architectures. In this work, we argue that scale and training research has been needlessly complex due to reliance on the cosine schedule, which prevents training across different lengths for the same model size. We investigate the training behavior of a direct alternative -- constant learning rate and cooldowns -- and find that it scales predictably and reliably similar to cosine. Additionally, we show that stochastic weight averaging yields improved performance along the training trajectory, without additional training costs, across different scales. Importantly, with these findings we demonstrate that scaling experiments can be performed with significantly reduced compute and GPU hours by utilizing fewer but reusable training runs. Our code is available at \url{https://github.com/epfml/schedules-and-scaling/}.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_18392
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Scaling Laws and Compute-Optimal Training Beyond Fixed Training Durations
Hägele, Alexander
Bakouch, Elie
Kosson, Atli
Allal, Loubna Ben
Von Werra, Leandro
Jaggi, Martin
Machine Learning
Scale has become a main ingredient in obtaining strong machine learning models. As a result, understanding a model's scaling properties is key to effectively designing both the right training setup as well as future generations of architectures. In this work, we argue that scale and training research has been needlessly complex due to reliance on the cosine schedule, which prevents training across different lengths for the same model size. We investigate the training behavior of a direct alternative -- constant learning rate and cooldowns -- and find that it scales predictably and reliably similar to cosine. Additionally, we show that stochastic weight averaging yields improved performance along the training trajectory, without additional training costs, across different scales. Importantly, with these findings we demonstrate that scaling experiments can be performed with significantly reduced compute and GPU hours by utilizing fewer but reusable training runs. Our code is available at \url{https://github.com/epfml/schedules-and-scaling/}.
title Scaling Laws and Compute-Optimal Training Beyond Fixed Training Durations
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.18392