On the Effectiveness of Incremental Training of Large Language Models

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Hauptverfasser: Li, Miles Q., Fung, Benjamin C. M., Huang, Shih-Chia
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Li, Miles Q.
Fung, Benjamin C. M.
Huang, Shih-Chia
author_facet Li, Miles Q.
Fung, Benjamin C. M.
Huang, Shih-Chia
contents Training large language models is a computationally intensive process that often requires substantial resources to achieve state-of-the-art results. Incremental layer-wise training has been proposed as a potential strategy to optimize the training process by progressively introducing layers, with the expectation that this approach would lead to faster convergence and more efficient use of computational resources. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of incremental training for LLMs, dividing the training process into multiple stages where layers are added progressively. Our experimental results indicate that while the incremental approach initially demonstrates some computational efficiency, it ultimately requires greater overall computational costs to reach comparable performance to traditional full-scale training. Although the incremental training process can eventually close the performance gap with the baseline, it does so only after significantly extended continual training. These findings suggest that incremental layer-wise training may not be a viable alternative for training large language models, highlighting its limitations and providing valuable insights into the inefficiencies of this approach.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_18700
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Effectiveness of Incremental Training of Large Language Models
Li, Miles Q.
Fung, Benjamin C. M.
Huang, Shih-Chia
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Training large language models is a computationally intensive process that often requires substantial resources to achieve state-of-the-art results. Incremental layer-wise training has been proposed as a potential strategy to optimize the training process by progressively introducing layers, with the expectation that this approach would lead to faster convergence and more efficient use of computational resources. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of incremental training for LLMs, dividing the training process into multiple stages where layers are added progressively. Our experimental results indicate that while the incremental approach initially demonstrates some computational efficiency, it ultimately requires greater overall computational costs to reach comparable performance to traditional full-scale training. Although the incremental training process can eventually close the performance gap with the baseline, it does so only after significantly extended continual training. These findings suggest that incremental layer-wise training may not be a viable alternative for training large language models, highlighting its limitations and providing valuable insights into the inefficiencies of this approach.
title On the Effectiveness of Incremental Training of Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.18700