arXiv Machine Learning

Flatland: The Adventures of Gradient Descent with Large Step Sizes

arXiv:2606. 06722v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The training of neural networks often entails objective functions that are not globally $L$-smooth.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 2

Zeroth-Order Optimization at the Edge of Stability

arXiv:2604. 14669v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Zeroth-order (ZO) methods are widely used when gradients are unavailable or prohibitively expensive, including black-box learning and memory-efficient fine-tuning of large models, yet their optimization dynamics in deep learning remain underexplored.

By Minhak Song, Liang Zhang, Bingcong Li, Niao He, Michael Muehlebach, Sewoong Oh
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 30

Non-Euclidean Gradient Descent Operates at the Edge of Stability

arXiv:2603. 05002v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The Edge of Stability (EoS) is a phenomenon where the sharpness (largest eigenvalue) of the Hessian approaches and then hovers near the stability threshold $2/\eta$ during gradient descent (GD) with step size $\eta$.

By Rustem Islamov, Michael Crawshaw, Jeremy Cohen, Robert Gower
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 12

A lower bound for stepsize-based acceleration of gradient descent

arXiv:2608. 10418v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent work has shown that, for smooth convex optimization, plain gradient descent can be accelerated from its textbook convergence rate of $O(T^{-1})$ (where $T$ denotes the number of iterations) to $O\big(T^{-\log_2(1+\sqrt{2})}\big)$ using carefully designed stepsize schedules alone, without resorting to momentum or other algorithmic modifications.

By Jianhao Ma, Yuxin Chen
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 4

On the Implicit Flatness Bias of Sharpness-Aware Minimization: A Linear Stability Analysis with Quantitative Hyperparameter Bounds

Sharpness-Aware Minimization (SAM) improves generalization by seeking parameters whose loss is robust to local adversarial perturbations, but the quantitative mechanism underlying its implicit bias toward flat minima remains unclear. In particular, the perturbation radius $ρ$ is typically treated as an isolated tuning parameter, despite defining the neighborhood in which SAM measures sharpness.