Memorization capacity of deep ReLU neural networks characterized by width and depth

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Yang, Xin, Yang, Yunfei
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Yang, Xin
Yang, Yunfei
author_facet Yang, Xin
Yang, Yunfei
contents This paper studies the memorization capacity of deep neural networks with ReLU activation. Specifically, we investigate the minimal size of such networks to memorize any $N$ data points in the unit ball with pairwise separation distance $δ$ and discrete labels. Most prior studies characterize the memorization capacity by the number of parameters or neurons. We generalize these results by constructing neural networks, whose width $W$ and depth $L$ satisfy $W^2L^2= \mathcal{O}(N\log(δ^{-1}))$, that can memorize any $N$ data samples. We also prove that any such networks should also satisfy the lower bound $W^2L^2=Ω(N \log(δ^{-1}))$, which implies that our construction is optimal up to logarithmic factors when $δ^{-1}$ is polynomial in $N$. Hence, we explicitly characterize the trade-off between width and depth for the memorization capacity of deep neural networks in this regime.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_09589
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Memorization capacity of deep ReLU neural networks characterized by width and depth
Yang, Xin
Yang, Yunfei
Machine Learning
Numerical Analysis
This paper studies the memorization capacity of deep neural networks with ReLU activation. Specifically, we investigate the minimal size of such networks to memorize any $N$ data points in the unit ball with pairwise separation distance $δ$ and discrete labels. Most prior studies characterize the memorization capacity by the number of parameters or neurons. We generalize these results by constructing neural networks, whose width $W$ and depth $L$ satisfy $W^2L^2= \mathcal{O}(N\log(δ^{-1}))$, that can memorize any $N$ data samples. We also prove that any such networks should also satisfy the lower bound $W^2L^2=Ω(N \log(δ^{-1}))$, which implies that our construction is optimal up to logarithmic factors when $δ^{-1}$ is polynomial in $N$. Hence, we explicitly characterize the trade-off between width and depth for the memorization capacity of deep neural networks in this regime.
title Memorization capacity of deep ReLU neural networks characterized by width and depth
topic Machine Learning
Numerical Analysis
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09589