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Main Authors: Yuan, Yuchen, Yang, Junhuan, Wan, Hao, Liu, Yipei, Wu, Hanhan, Lin, Youzuo, Yang, Lei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09032
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author Yuan, Yuchen
Yang, Junhuan
Wan, Hao
Liu, Yipei
Wu, Hanhan
Lin, Youzuo
Yang, Lei
author_facet Yuan, Yuchen
Yang, Junhuan
Wan, Hao
Liu, Yipei
Wu, Hanhan
Lin, Youzuo
Yang, Lei
contents Scientific machine learning (SciML) is increasingly applied to in-field processing, controlling, and monitoring; however, wide-area sensing, real-time demands, and strict energy and reliability constraints make centralized SciML implementation impractical. Most SciML models assume raw data aggregation at a central node, incurring prohibitively high communication latency and energy costs; yet, distributing models developed for general-purpose ML often breaks essential physical principles, resulting in degraded performance. To address these challenges, we introduce EPIC, a hardware- and physics-co-guided distributed SciML framework, using full-waveform inversion (FWI) as a representative task. EPIC performs lightweight local encoding on end devices and physics-aware decoding at a central node. By transmitting compact latent features rather than high-volume raw data and by using cross-attention to capture inter-receiver wavefield coupling, EPIC significantly reduces communication cost while preserving physical fidelity. Evaluated on a distributed testbed with five end devices and one central node, and across 10 datasets from OpenFWI, EPIC reduces latency by 8.9$\times$ and communication energy by 33.8$\times$, while even improving reconstruction fidelity on 8 out of 10 datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_09032
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Two Teachers Better Than One: Hardware-Physics Co-Guided Distributed Scientific Machine Learning
Yuan, Yuchen
Yang, Junhuan
Wan, Hao
Liu, Yipei
Wu, Hanhan
Lin, Youzuo
Yang, Lei
Machine Learning
Hardware Architecture
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Scientific machine learning (SciML) is increasingly applied to in-field processing, controlling, and monitoring; however, wide-area sensing, real-time demands, and strict energy and reliability constraints make centralized SciML implementation impractical. Most SciML models assume raw data aggregation at a central node, incurring prohibitively high communication latency and energy costs; yet, distributing models developed for general-purpose ML often breaks essential physical principles, resulting in degraded performance. To address these challenges, we introduce EPIC, a hardware- and physics-co-guided distributed SciML framework, using full-waveform inversion (FWI) as a representative task. EPIC performs lightweight local encoding on end devices and physics-aware decoding at a central node. By transmitting compact latent features rather than high-volume raw data and by using cross-attention to capture inter-receiver wavefield coupling, EPIC significantly reduces communication cost while preserving physical fidelity. Evaluated on a distributed testbed with five end devices and one central node, and across 10 datasets from OpenFWI, EPIC reduces latency by 8.9$\times$ and communication energy by 33.8$\times$, while even improving reconstruction fidelity on 8 out of 10 datasets.
title Two Teachers Better Than One: Hardware-Physics Co-Guided Distributed Scientific Machine Learning
topic Machine Learning
Hardware Architecture
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09032