Moirai-MoE: Empowering Time Series Foundation Models with Sparse Mixture of Experts

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Xu, Liu, Juncheng, Woo, Gerald, Aksu, Taha, Liang, Yuxuan, Zimmermann, Roger, Liu, Chenghao, Savarese, Silvio, Xiong, Caiming, Sahoo, Doyen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Liu, Xu
Liu, Juncheng
Woo, Gerald
Aksu, Taha
Liang, Yuxuan
Zimmermann, Roger
Liu, Chenghao
Savarese, Silvio
Xiong, Caiming
Sahoo, Doyen
author_facet Liu, Xu
Liu, Juncheng
Woo, Gerald
Aksu, Taha
Liang, Yuxuan
Zimmermann, Roger
Liu, Chenghao
Savarese, Silvio
Xiong, Caiming
Sahoo, Doyen
contents Time series foundation models have demonstrated impressive performance as zero-shot forecasters. However, achieving effectively unified training on time series remains an open challenge. Existing approaches introduce some level of model specialization to account for the highly heterogeneous nature of time series data. For instance, Moirai pursues unified training by employing multiple input/output projection layers, each tailored to handle time series at a specific frequency. Similarly, TimesFM maintains a frequency embedding dictionary for this purpose. We identify two major drawbacks to this human-imposed frequency-level model specialization: (1) Frequency is not a reliable indicator of the underlying patterns in time series. For example, time series with different frequencies can display similar patterns, while those with the same frequency may exhibit varied patterns. (2) Non-stationarity is an inherent property of real-world time series, leading to varied distributions even within a short context window of a single time series. Frequency-level specialization is too coarse-grained to capture this level of diversity. To address these limitations, this paper introduces Moirai-MoE, using a single input/output projection layer while delegating the modeling of diverse time series patterns to the sparse mixture of experts (MoE) within Transformers. With these designs, Moirai-MoE reduces reliance on human-defined heuristics and enables automatic token-level specialization. Extensive experiments on 39 datasets demonstrate the superiority of Moirai-MoE over existing foundation models in both in-distribution and zero-shot scenarios. Furthermore, this study conducts comprehensive model analyses to explore the inner workings of time series MoE foundation models and provides valuable insights for future research.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_10469
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Moirai-MoE: Empowering Time Series Foundation Models with Sparse Mixture of Experts
Liu, Xu
Liu, Juncheng
Woo, Gerald
Aksu, Taha
Liang, Yuxuan
Zimmermann, Roger
Liu, Chenghao
Savarese, Silvio
Xiong, Caiming
Sahoo, Doyen
Machine Learning
Time series foundation models have demonstrated impressive performance as zero-shot forecasters. However, achieving effectively unified training on time series remains an open challenge. Existing approaches introduce some level of model specialization to account for the highly heterogeneous nature of time series data. For instance, Moirai pursues unified training by employing multiple input/output projection layers, each tailored to handle time series at a specific frequency. Similarly, TimesFM maintains a frequency embedding dictionary for this purpose. We identify two major drawbacks to this human-imposed frequency-level model specialization: (1) Frequency is not a reliable indicator of the underlying patterns in time series. For example, time series with different frequencies can display similar patterns, while those with the same frequency may exhibit varied patterns. (2) Non-stationarity is an inherent property of real-world time series, leading to varied distributions even within a short context window of a single time series. Frequency-level specialization is too coarse-grained to capture this level of diversity. To address these limitations, this paper introduces Moirai-MoE, using a single input/output projection layer while delegating the modeling of diverse time series patterns to the sparse mixture of experts (MoE) within Transformers. With these designs, Moirai-MoE reduces reliance on human-defined heuristics and enables automatic token-level specialization. Extensive experiments on 39 datasets demonstrate the superiority of Moirai-MoE over existing foundation models in both in-distribution and zero-shot scenarios. Furthermore, this study conducts comprehensive model analyses to explore the inner workings of time series MoE foundation models and provides valuable insights for future research.
title Moirai-MoE: Empowering Time Series Foundation Models with Sparse Mixture of Experts
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.10469