Adaptive Dropout for Pruning Conformers

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kubo, Yotaro, Cai, Xingyu, Bacchiani, Michiel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Kubo, Yotaro
Cai, Xingyu
Bacchiani, Michiel
author_facet Kubo, Yotaro
Cai, Xingyu
Bacchiani, Michiel
contents This paper proposes a method to effectively perform joint training-and-pruning based on adaptive dropout layers with unit-wise retention probabilities. The proposed method is based on the estimation of a unit-wise retention probability in a dropout layer. A unit that is estimated to have a small retention probability can be considered to be prunable. The retention probability of the unit is estimated using back-propagation and the Gumbel-Softmax technique. This pruning method is applied at several application points in Conformers such that the effective number of parameters can be significantly reduced. Specifically, adaptive dropout layers are introduced in three locations in each Conformer block: (a) the hidden layer of the feed-forward-net component, (b) the query vectors and the value vectors of the self-attention component, and (c) the input vectors of the LConv component. The proposed method is evaluated by conducting a speech recognition experiment on the LibriSpeech task. It was shown that this approach could simultaneously achieve a parameter reduction and accuracy improvement. The word error rates improved by approx 1% while reducing the number of parameters by 54%.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_04836
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Adaptive Dropout for Pruning Conformers
Kubo, Yotaro
Cai, Xingyu
Bacchiani, Michiel
Computation and Language
Audio and Speech Processing
This paper proposes a method to effectively perform joint training-and-pruning based on adaptive dropout layers with unit-wise retention probabilities. The proposed method is based on the estimation of a unit-wise retention probability in a dropout layer. A unit that is estimated to have a small retention probability can be considered to be prunable. The retention probability of the unit is estimated using back-propagation and the Gumbel-Softmax technique. This pruning method is applied at several application points in Conformers such that the effective number of parameters can be significantly reduced. Specifically, adaptive dropout layers are introduced in three locations in each Conformer block: (a) the hidden layer of the feed-forward-net component, (b) the query vectors and the value vectors of the self-attention component, and (c) the input vectors of the LConv component. The proposed method is evaluated by conducting a speech recognition experiment on the LibriSpeech task. It was shown that this approach could simultaneously achieve a parameter reduction and accuracy improvement. The word error rates improved by approx 1% while reducing the number of parameters by 54%.
title Adaptive Dropout for Pruning Conformers
topic Computation and Language
Audio and Speech Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.04836