GreenFactory: Ensembling Zero-Cost Proxies to Estimate Performance of Neural Networks

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Cortês, Gabriel, Lourenço, Nuno, Romano, Paolo, Machado, Penousal
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Cortês, Gabriel
Lourenço, Nuno
Romano, Paolo
Machado, Penousal
author_facet Cortês, Gabriel
Lourenço, Nuno
Romano, Paolo
Machado, Penousal
contents Determining the performance of a Deep Neural Network during Neural Architecture Search processes is essential for identifying optimal architectures and hyperparameters. Traditionally, this process requires training and evaluation of each network, which is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Zero-cost proxies estimate performance without training, serving as an alternative to traditional training. However, recent proxies often lack generalization across diverse scenarios and provide only relative rankings rather than predicted accuracies. To address these limitations, we propose GreenFactory, an ensemble of zero-cost proxies that leverages a random forest regressor to combine multiple predictors' strengths and directly predict model test accuracy. We evaluate GreenFactory on NATS-Bench, achieving robust results across multiple datasets. Specifically, GreenFactory achieves high Kendall correlations on NATS-Bench-SSS, indicating substantial agreement between its predicted scores and actual performance: 0.907 for CIFAR-10, 0.945 for CIFAR-100, and 0.920 for ImageNet-16-120. Similarly, on NATS-Bench-TSS, we achieve correlations of 0.921 for CIFAR-10, 0.929 for CIFAR-100, and 0.908 for ImageNet-16-120, showcasing its reliability in both search spaces.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_09344
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GreenFactory: Ensembling Zero-Cost Proxies to Estimate Performance of Neural Networks
Cortês, Gabriel
Lourenço, Nuno
Romano, Paolo
Machado, Penousal
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Determining the performance of a Deep Neural Network during Neural Architecture Search processes is essential for identifying optimal architectures and hyperparameters. Traditionally, this process requires training and evaluation of each network, which is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Zero-cost proxies estimate performance without training, serving as an alternative to traditional training. However, recent proxies often lack generalization across diverse scenarios and provide only relative rankings rather than predicted accuracies. To address these limitations, we propose GreenFactory, an ensemble of zero-cost proxies that leverages a random forest regressor to combine multiple predictors' strengths and directly predict model test accuracy. We evaluate GreenFactory on NATS-Bench, achieving robust results across multiple datasets. Specifically, GreenFactory achieves high Kendall correlations on NATS-Bench-SSS, indicating substantial agreement between its predicted scores and actual performance: 0.907 for CIFAR-10, 0.945 for CIFAR-100, and 0.920 for ImageNet-16-120. Similarly, on NATS-Bench-TSS, we achieve correlations of 0.921 for CIFAR-10, 0.929 for CIFAR-100, and 0.908 for ImageNet-16-120, showcasing its reliability in both search spaces.
title GreenFactory: Ensembling Zero-Cost Proxies to Estimate Performance of Neural Networks
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09344