Merging Models on the Fly Without Retraining: A Sequential Approach to Scalable Continual Model Merging

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Tang, Anke, Yang, Enneng, Shen, Li, Luo, Yong, Hu, Han, Du, Bo, Tao, Dacheng
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Tang, Anke
Yang, Enneng
Shen, Li
Luo, Yong
Hu, Han
Du, Bo
Tao, Dacheng
author_facet Tang, Anke
Yang, Enneng
Shen, Li
Luo, Yong
Hu, Han
Du, Bo
Tao, Dacheng
contents Deep model merging represents an emerging research direction that combines multiple fine-tuned models to harness their specialized capabilities across different tasks and domains. Current model merging techniques focus on merging all available models simultaneously, with weight interpolation-based methods being the predominant approaches. However, these conventional approaches are not well-suited for scenarios where models become available sequentially, and they often suffer from high memory requirements and potential interference between tasks. In this study, we propose a training-free projection-based continual merging method that processes models sequentially through orthogonal projections of weight matrices and adaptive scaling mechanisms. Our method operates by projecting new parameter updates onto subspaces orthogonal to existing merged parameter updates while using an adaptive scaling mechanism to maintain stable parameter distances, enabling efficient sequential integration of task-specific knowledge. Our approach maintains constant memory complexity to the number of models, minimizes interference between tasks through orthogonal projections, and retains the performance of previously merged models through adaptive task vector scaling. Extensive experiments on CLIP-ViT models demonstrate that our method achieves a 5-8% average accuracy improvement while maintaining robust performance in different task orderings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_09522
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Merging Models on the Fly Without Retraining: A Sequential Approach to Scalable Continual Model Merging
Tang, Anke
Yang, Enneng
Shen, Li
Luo, Yong
Hu, Han
Du, Bo
Tao, Dacheng
Machine Learning
Deep model merging represents an emerging research direction that combines multiple fine-tuned models to harness their specialized capabilities across different tasks and domains. Current model merging techniques focus on merging all available models simultaneously, with weight interpolation-based methods being the predominant approaches. However, these conventional approaches are not well-suited for scenarios where models become available sequentially, and they often suffer from high memory requirements and potential interference between tasks. In this study, we propose a training-free projection-based continual merging method that processes models sequentially through orthogonal projections of weight matrices and adaptive scaling mechanisms. Our method operates by projecting new parameter updates onto subspaces orthogonal to existing merged parameter updates while using an adaptive scaling mechanism to maintain stable parameter distances, enabling efficient sequential integration of task-specific knowledge. Our approach maintains constant memory complexity to the number of models, minimizes interference between tasks through orthogonal projections, and retains the performance of previously merged models through adaptive task vector scaling. Extensive experiments on CLIP-ViT models demonstrate that our method achieves a 5-8% average accuracy improvement while maintaining robust performance in different task orderings.
title Merging Models on the Fly Without Retraining: A Sequential Approach to Scalable Continual Model Merging
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.09522