Evolving Deep Learning Optimizers

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Marfinetz, Mitchell
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Marfinetz, Mitchell
author_facet Marfinetz, Mitchell
contents We present a genetic algorithm framework for automatically discovering deep learning optimization algorithms. Our approach encodes optimizers as genomes that specify combinations of primitive update terms (gradient, momentum, RMS normalization, Adam-style adaptive terms, and sign-based updates) along with hyperparameters and scheduling options. Through evolutionary search over 50 generations with a population of 50 individuals, evaluated across multiple vision tasks, we discover an evolved optimizer that outperforms Adam by 2.6% in aggregate fitness and achieves a 7.7% relative improvement on CIFAR-10. The evolved optimizer combines sign-based gradient terms with adaptive moment estimation, uses lower momentum coefficients than Adam ($β_1$=0.86, $β_2$=0.94), and notably disables bias correction while enabling learning rate warmup and cosine decay. Our results demonstrate that evolutionary search can discover competitive optimization algorithms and reveal design principles that differ from hand-crafted optimizers. Code is available at https://github.com/mmarfinetz/evo-optimizer.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_11853
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evolving Deep Learning Optimizers
Marfinetz, Mitchell
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Machine Learning
I.2.6
We present a genetic algorithm framework for automatically discovering deep learning optimization algorithms. Our approach encodes optimizers as genomes that specify combinations of primitive update terms (gradient, momentum, RMS normalization, Adam-style adaptive terms, and sign-based updates) along with hyperparameters and scheduling options. Through evolutionary search over 50 generations with a population of 50 individuals, evaluated across multiple vision tasks, we discover an evolved optimizer that outperforms Adam by 2.6% in aggregate fitness and achieves a 7.7% relative improvement on CIFAR-10. The evolved optimizer combines sign-based gradient terms with adaptive moment estimation, uses lower momentum coefficients than Adam ($β_1$=0.86, $β_2$=0.94), and notably disables bias correction while enabling learning rate warmup and cosine decay. Our results demonstrate that evolutionary search can discover competitive optimization algorithms and reveal design principles that differ from hand-crafted optimizers. Code is available at https://github.com/mmarfinetz/evo-optimizer.
title Evolving Deep Learning Optimizers
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Machine Learning
I.2.6
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11853