AFBS:Buffer Gradient Selection in Semi-asynchronous Federated Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lu, Chaoyi, Sun, Yiding, Chen, Jinqian, Yang, Zhichuan, Pan, Jiangming, Zhu, Jihua
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Lu, Chaoyi
Sun, Yiding
Chen, Jinqian
Yang, Zhichuan
Pan, Jiangming
Zhu, Jihua
author_facet Lu, Chaoyi
Sun, Yiding
Chen, Jinqian
Yang, Zhichuan
Pan, Jiangming
Zhu, Jihua
contents Asynchronous federated learning (AFL) accelerates training by eliminating the need to wait for stragglers, but its asynchronous nature introduces gradient staleness, where outdated gradients degrade performance. Existing solutions address this issue with gradient buffers, forming a semi-asynchronous framework. However, this approach struggles when buffers accumulate numerous stale gradients, as blindly aggregating all gradients can harm training. To address this, we propose AFBS (Asynchronous FL Buffer Selection), the first algorithm to perform gradient selection within buffers while ensuring privacy protection. Specifically, the client sends the random projection encrypted label distribution matrix before training, and the server performs client clustering based on it. During training, server scores and selects gradients within each cluster based on their informational value, discarding low-value gradients to enhance semi-asynchronous federated learning. Extensive experiments in highly heterogeneous system and data environments demonstrate AFBS's superior performance compared to state-of-the-art methods. Notably, on the most challenging task, CIFAR-100, AFBS improves accuracy by up to 4.8% over the previous best algorithm and reduces the time to reach target accuracy by 75%.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_12754
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AFBS:Buffer Gradient Selection in Semi-asynchronous Federated Learning
Lu, Chaoyi
Sun, Yiding
Chen, Jinqian
Yang, Zhichuan
Pan, Jiangming
Zhu, Jihua
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Asynchronous federated learning (AFL) accelerates training by eliminating the need to wait for stragglers, but its asynchronous nature introduces gradient staleness, where outdated gradients degrade performance. Existing solutions address this issue with gradient buffers, forming a semi-asynchronous framework. However, this approach struggles when buffers accumulate numerous stale gradients, as blindly aggregating all gradients can harm training. To address this, we propose AFBS (Asynchronous FL Buffer Selection), the first algorithm to perform gradient selection within buffers while ensuring privacy protection. Specifically, the client sends the random projection encrypted label distribution matrix before training, and the server performs client clustering based on it. During training, server scores and selects gradients within each cluster based on their informational value, discarding low-value gradients to enhance semi-asynchronous federated learning. Extensive experiments in highly heterogeneous system and data environments demonstrate AFBS's superior performance compared to state-of-the-art methods. Notably, on the most challenging task, CIFAR-100, AFBS improves accuracy by up to 4.8% over the previous best algorithm and reduces the time to reach target accuracy by 75%.
title AFBS:Buffer Gradient Selection in Semi-asynchronous Federated Learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12754