SEAFL: Enhancing Efficiency in Semi-Asynchronous Federated Learning through Adaptive Aggregation and Selective Training

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Islam, Md Sirajul, Panta, Sanjeev, Xu, Fei, Yuan, Xu, Chen, Li, Tzeng, Nian-Feng
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Islam, Md Sirajul
Panta, Sanjeev
Xu, Fei
Yuan, Xu
Chen, Li
Tzeng, Nian-Feng
author_facet Islam, Md Sirajul
Panta, Sanjeev
Xu, Fei
Yuan, Xu
Chen, Li
Tzeng, Nian-Feng
contents Federated Learning (FL) is a promising distributed machine learning framework that allows collaborative learning of a global model across decentralized devices without uploading their local data. However, in real-world FL scenarios, the conventional synchronous FL mechanism suffers from inefficient training caused by slow-speed devices, commonly known as stragglers, especially in heterogeneous communication environments. Though asynchronous FL effectively tackles the efficiency challenge, it induces substantial system overheads and model degradation. Striking for a balance, semi-asynchronous FL has gained increasing attention, while still suffering from the open challenge of stale models, where newly arrived updates are calculated based on outdated weights that easily hurt the convergence of the global model. In this paper, we present {\em SEAFL}, a novel FL framework designed to mitigate both the straggler and the stale model challenges in semi-asynchronous FL. {\em SEAFL} dynamically assigns weights to uploaded models during aggregation based on their staleness and importance to the current global model. We theoretically analyze the convergence rate of {\em SEAFL} and further enhance the training efficiency with an extended variant that allows partial training on slower devices, enabling them to contribute to global aggregation while reducing excessive waiting times. We evaluate the effectiveness of {\em SEAFL} through extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that {\em SEAFL} outperforms its closest counterpart by up to $\sim$22\% in terms of the wall-clock training time required to achieve target accuracy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_05755
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SEAFL: Enhancing Efficiency in Semi-Asynchronous Federated Learning through Adaptive Aggregation and Selective Training
Islam, Md Sirajul
Panta, Sanjeev
Xu, Fei
Yuan, Xu
Chen, Li
Tzeng, Nian-Feng
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Federated Learning (FL) is a promising distributed machine learning framework that allows collaborative learning of a global model across decentralized devices without uploading their local data. However, in real-world FL scenarios, the conventional synchronous FL mechanism suffers from inefficient training caused by slow-speed devices, commonly known as stragglers, especially in heterogeneous communication environments. Though asynchronous FL effectively tackles the efficiency challenge, it induces substantial system overheads and model degradation. Striking for a balance, semi-asynchronous FL has gained increasing attention, while still suffering from the open challenge of stale models, where newly arrived updates are calculated based on outdated weights that easily hurt the convergence of the global model. In this paper, we present {\em SEAFL}, a novel FL framework designed to mitigate both the straggler and the stale model challenges in semi-asynchronous FL. {\em SEAFL} dynamically assigns weights to uploaded models during aggregation based on their staleness and importance to the current global model. We theoretically analyze the convergence rate of {\em SEAFL} and further enhance the training efficiency with an extended variant that allows partial training on slower devices, enabling them to contribute to global aggregation while reducing excessive waiting times. We evaluate the effectiveness of {\em SEAFL} through extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that {\em SEAFL} outperforms its closest counterpart by up to $\sim$22\% in terms of the wall-clock training time required to achieve target accuracy.
title SEAFL: Enhancing Efficiency in Semi-Asynchronous Federated Learning through Adaptive Aggregation and Selective Training
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.05755