Mix-and-Match Pruning: Globally Guided Layer-Wise Sparsification of DNNs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Monachan, Danial, Nazari, Samira, Taheri, Mahdi, Azarpeyvand, Ali, Krstic, Milos, Huebner, Michael, Herglotz, Christian
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Monachan, Danial
Nazari, Samira
Taheri, Mahdi
Azarpeyvand, Ali
Krstic, Milos
Huebner, Michael
Herglotz, Christian
author_facet Monachan, Danial
Nazari, Samira
Taheri, Mahdi
Azarpeyvand, Ali
Krstic, Milos
Huebner, Michael
Herglotz, Christian
contents Deploying deep neural networks (DNNs) on edge devices requires strong compression with minimal accuracy loss. This paper introduces Mix-and-Match Pruning, a globally guided, layer-wise sparsification framework that leverages sensitivity scores and simple architectural rules to generate diverse, high-quality pruning configurations. The framework addresses a key limitation that different layers and architectures respond differently to pruning, making single-strategy approaches suboptimal. Mix-and-Match derives architecture-aware sparsity ranges, e.g., preserving normalization layers while pruning classifiers more aggressively, and systematically samples these ranges to produce ten strategies per sensitivity signal (magnitude, gradient, or their combination). This eliminates repeated pruning runs while offering deployment-ready accuracy-sparsity trade-offs. Experiments on CNNs and Vision Transformers demonstrate Pareto-optimal results, with Mix-and-Match reducing accuracy degradation on Swin-Tiny by 40% relative to standard single-criterion pruning. These findings show that coordinating existing pruning signals enables more reliable and efficient compressed models than introducing new criteria.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_20280
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mix-and-Match Pruning: Globally Guided Layer-Wise Sparsification of DNNs
Monachan, Danial
Nazari, Samira
Taheri, Mahdi
Azarpeyvand, Ali
Krstic, Milos
Huebner, Michael
Herglotz, Christian
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Hardware Architecture
Machine Learning
Deploying deep neural networks (DNNs) on edge devices requires strong compression with minimal accuracy loss. This paper introduces Mix-and-Match Pruning, a globally guided, layer-wise sparsification framework that leverages sensitivity scores and simple architectural rules to generate diverse, high-quality pruning configurations. The framework addresses a key limitation that different layers and architectures respond differently to pruning, making single-strategy approaches suboptimal. Mix-and-Match derives architecture-aware sparsity ranges, e.g., preserving normalization layers while pruning classifiers more aggressively, and systematically samples these ranges to produce ten strategies per sensitivity signal (magnitude, gradient, or their combination). This eliminates repeated pruning runs while offering deployment-ready accuracy-sparsity trade-offs. Experiments on CNNs and Vision Transformers demonstrate Pareto-optimal results, with Mix-and-Match reducing accuracy degradation on Swin-Tiny by 40% relative to standard single-criterion pruning. These findings show that coordinating existing pruning signals enables more reliable and efficient compressed models than introducing new criteria.
title Mix-and-Match Pruning: Globally Guided Layer-Wise Sparsification of DNNs
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Hardware Architecture
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20280