Same accuracy, twice as fast: continuous training surpasses retraining from scratch

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Verwimp, Eli, Hacohen, Guy, Tuytelaars, Tinne
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Verwimp, Eli
Hacohen, Guy
Tuytelaars, Tinne
author_facet Verwimp, Eli
Hacohen, Guy
Tuytelaars, Tinne
contents Continual learning aims to enable models to adapt to new datasets without losing performance on previously learned data, often assuming that prior data is no longer available. However, in many practical scenarios, both old and new data are accessible. In such cases, good performance on both datasets is typically achieved by abandoning the model trained on the previous data and re-training a new model from scratch on both datasets. This training from scratch is computationally expensive. In contrast, methods that leverage the previously trained model and old data are worthy of investigation, as they could significantly reduce computational costs. Our evaluation framework quantifies the computational savings of such methods while maintaining or exceeding the performance of training from scratch. We identify key optimization aspects -- initialization, regularization, data selection, and hyper-parameters -- that can each contribute to reducing computational costs. For each aspect, we propose effective first-step methods that already yield substantial computational savings. By combining these methods, we achieve up to 2.7x reductions in computation time across various computer vision tasks, highlighting the potential for further advancements in this area.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_21147
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Same accuracy, twice as fast: continuous training surpasses retraining from scratch
Verwimp, Eli
Hacohen, Guy
Tuytelaars, Tinne
Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Continual learning aims to enable models to adapt to new datasets without losing performance on previously learned data, often assuming that prior data is no longer available. However, in many practical scenarios, both old and new data are accessible. In such cases, good performance on both datasets is typically achieved by abandoning the model trained on the previous data and re-training a new model from scratch on both datasets. This training from scratch is computationally expensive. In contrast, methods that leverage the previously trained model and old data are worthy of investigation, as they could significantly reduce computational costs. Our evaluation framework quantifies the computational savings of such methods while maintaining or exceeding the performance of training from scratch. We identify key optimization aspects -- initialization, regularization, data selection, and hyper-parameters -- that can each contribute to reducing computational costs. For each aspect, we propose effective first-step methods that already yield substantial computational savings. By combining these methods, we achieve up to 2.7x reductions in computation time across various computer vision tasks, highlighting the potential for further advancements in this area.
title Same accuracy, twice as fast: continuous training surpasses retraining from scratch
topic Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.21147