LESA: Learnable LLM Layer Scaling-Up

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yang, Yifei, Cao, Zouying, Ma, Xinbei, Yao, Yao, Qin, Libo, Chen, Zhi, Zhao, Hai
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Yang, Yifei
Cao, Zouying
Ma, Xinbei
Yao, Yao
Qin, Libo
Chen, Zhi
Zhao, Hai
author_facet Yang, Yifei
Cao, Zouying
Ma, Xinbei
Yao, Yao
Qin, Libo
Chen, Zhi
Zhao, Hai
contents Training Large Language Models (LLMs) from scratch requires immense computational resources, making it prohibitively expensive. Model scaling-up offers a promising solution by leveraging the parameters of smaller models to create larger ones. However, existing depth scaling-up methods rely on empirical heuristic rules for layer duplication, which result in poorer initialization and slower convergence during continual pre-training. We propose \textbf{LESA}, a novel learnable method for depth scaling-up. By concatenating parameters from each layer and applying Singular Value Decomposition, we uncover latent patterns between layers, suggesting that inter-layer parameters can be learned. LESA uses a neural network to predict the parameters inserted between adjacent layers, enabling better initialization and faster training. Experiments show that LESA outperforms existing baselines, achieving superior performance with less than half the computational cost during continual pre-training. Extensive analyses demonstrate its effectiveness across different model sizes and tasks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_13794
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LESA: Learnable LLM Layer Scaling-Up
Yang, Yifei
Cao, Zouying
Ma, Xinbei
Yao, Yao
Qin, Libo
Chen, Zhi
Zhao, Hai
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Training Large Language Models (LLMs) from scratch requires immense computational resources, making it prohibitively expensive. Model scaling-up offers a promising solution by leveraging the parameters of smaller models to create larger ones. However, existing depth scaling-up methods rely on empirical heuristic rules for layer duplication, which result in poorer initialization and slower convergence during continual pre-training. We propose \textbf{LESA}, a novel learnable method for depth scaling-up. By concatenating parameters from each layer and applying Singular Value Decomposition, we uncover latent patterns between layers, suggesting that inter-layer parameters can be learned. LESA uses a neural network to predict the parameters inserted between adjacent layers, enabling better initialization and faster training. Experiments show that LESA outperforms existing baselines, achieving superior performance with less than half the computational cost during continual pre-training. Extensive analyses demonstrate its effectiveness across different model sizes and tasks.
title LESA: Learnable LLM Layer Scaling-Up
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13794