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Main Authors: Syed, Saifuddin, Bouchard-Côté, Alexandre, Chern, Kevin, Doucet, Arnaud
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.12057
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author Syed, Saifuddin
Bouchard-Côté, Alexandre
Chern, Kevin
Doucet, Arnaud
author_facet Syed, Saifuddin
Bouchard-Côté, Alexandre
Chern, Kevin
Doucet, Arnaud
contents Annealed Sequential Monte Carlo (ASMC) samplers are special cases of SMC samplers where the sequence of distributions can be embedded in a smooth path of distributions. Using this underlying path and a performance model based on the variance of the normalising constant estimator, we systematically study dense-schedule limits. From our theory emerges a notion of global barrier, capturing the inherent complexity of normalising constant approximation under our performance model. We then turn the resulting approximations into surrogate objective functions of algorithm performance, using them to guide method development. This leads to novel adaptive methods, Optimised Annealed SMC (OASMC), which address practical difficulties inherent in previous adaptive SMC methods. First, our OASMC algorithms are predictable: they produce a sequence of increasingly precise estimates at deterministic, known times. Second, Optimised Annealed Importance Sampling (OAIS), a special case of OASMC, enables schedule adaptation at a memory cost constant in the number of particles, requiring significantly less communication. Finally, these characteristics make OAIS highly efficient on GPUs. We provide an open-source, high-performance GPU implementation of our method and demonstrate up to a hundred-fold speed improvement compared to state-of-the-art adaptive AIS methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_12057
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimised Annealed Sequential Monte Carlo Samplers
Syed, Saifuddin
Bouchard-Côté, Alexandre
Chern, Kevin
Doucet, Arnaud
Computation
Annealed Sequential Monte Carlo (ASMC) samplers are special cases of SMC samplers where the sequence of distributions can be embedded in a smooth path of distributions. Using this underlying path and a performance model based on the variance of the normalising constant estimator, we systematically study dense-schedule limits. From our theory emerges a notion of global barrier, capturing the inherent complexity of normalising constant approximation under our performance model. We then turn the resulting approximations into surrogate objective functions of algorithm performance, using them to guide method development. This leads to novel adaptive methods, Optimised Annealed SMC (OASMC), which address practical difficulties inherent in previous adaptive SMC methods. First, our OASMC algorithms are predictable: they produce a sequence of increasingly precise estimates at deterministic, known times. Second, Optimised Annealed Importance Sampling (OAIS), a special case of OASMC, enables schedule adaptation at a memory cost constant in the number of particles, requiring significantly less communication. Finally, these characteristics make OAIS highly efficient on GPUs. We provide an open-source, high-performance GPU implementation of our method and demonstrate up to a hundred-fold speed improvement compared to state-of-the-art adaptive AIS methods.
title Optimised Annealed Sequential Monte Carlo Samplers
topic Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.12057