Dependence of Equilibrium Propagation Training Success on Network Architecture

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Wang, Qingshan, Wanjura, Clara C., Marquardt, Florian
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Wang, Qingshan
Wanjura, Clara C.
Marquardt, Florian
author_facet Wang, Qingshan
Wanjura, Clara C.
Marquardt, Florian
contents The rapid rise of artificial intelligence has led to an unsustainable growth in energy consumption. This has motivated progress in neuromorphic computing and physics-based training of learning machines as alternatives to digital neural networks. Many theoretical studies focus on simple architectures like all-to-all or densely connected layered networks. However, these may be challenging to realize experimentally, e.g. due to connectivity constraints. In this work, we investigate the performance of the widespread physics-based training method of equilibrium propagation for more realistic architectural choices, specifically, locally connected lattices. We train an XY model and explore the influence of architecture on various benchmark tasks, tracking the evolution of spatially distributed responses and couplings during training. Our results show that sparse networks with only local connections can achieve performance comparable to dense networks. Our findings provide guidelines for further scaling up architectures based on equilibrium propagation in realistic settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_21945
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dependence of Equilibrium Propagation Training Success on Network Architecture
Wang, Qingshan
Wanjura, Clara C.
Marquardt, Florian
Machine Learning
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Emerging Technologies
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
The rapid rise of artificial intelligence has led to an unsustainable growth in energy consumption. This has motivated progress in neuromorphic computing and physics-based training of learning machines as alternatives to digital neural networks. Many theoretical studies focus on simple architectures like all-to-all or densely connected layered networks. However, these may be challenging to realize experimentally, e.g. due to connectivity constraints. In this work, we investigate the performance of the widespread physics-based training method of equilibrium propagation for more realistic architectural choices, specifically, locally connected lattices. We train an XY model and explore the influence of architecture on various benchmark tasks, tracking the evolution of spatially distributed responses and couplings during training. Our results show that sparse networks with only local connections can achieve performance comparable to dense networks. Our findings provide guidelines for further scaling up architectures based on equilibrium propagation in realistic settings.
title Dependence of Equilibrium Propagation Training Success on Network Architecture
topic Machine Learning
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Emerging Technologies
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.21945