Evolution Fine-Tuning: Learning to Discover Across 371 Optimization Tasks
arXiv:2606. 29082v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Would experience designing faster GPU kernels also help close in on a long-standing open mathematical conjecture?
arXiv:2606. 29082v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Would experience designing faster GPU kernels also help close in on a long-standing open mathematical conjecture?
The paper demonstrates that the number of candidates generated during test-time scaling of large language models does not fully capture the system cost. By comparing different generation schedules (e.g., one batched call versus multiple serial calls) while keeping the total candidate count fixed, the authors show that serial calls consume significantly more GPU energy and latency. The study suggests that reporting candidate count alone is insufficient; evaluations should also include generation schedule and GPU-level metrics.
arXiv:2606. 19004v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) post-training of Diffusion Transformers (DiTs) is prohibitively expensive, requiring thousands of high-end GPUs.
arXiv:2607. 09688v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Low autocorrelation binary sequences problem (LABS) is a hard combinatorial optimization challenge with important applications in communications, signal processing, and satellite navigation.
arXiv:2601. 22448v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: RLVR has become a standard recipe for training LLMs on reasoning tasks with verifiable outcomes, but when rollout generation dominates the cost, efficiency hinges on which prompts are sampled and when.
Agentic ESOpt proposes using evolution strategies (ES) instead of reinforcement learning to fine‑tune large language‑model agents for long‑horizon tasks. ES offers model scalability, flexibility, and better long‑horizon credit assignment, enabling full‑parameter optimization with minimal GPU memory. The framework samples parameter perturbations, evaluates agents with rewards, and updates online, achieving notable performance gains on WebArena‑Lite and in test‑time prompt‑parameter co‑evolution.
arXiv:2607. 02390v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: How can Large Language Models (LLMs) solve problems they currently cannot?
The paper introduces Discovery Loop, a lightweight system that employs a large language model (LLM) to iteratively evolve optimization algorithms for the Packomania circle‑packing benchmark. Starting from a simple seed solver, the LLM proposes algorithmic improvements guided by a scoreboard and a history of prior ideas, evaluates each candidate against an independent verifier, and retains only successful changes. Within 15 iterations and a total LLM cost of $27.72, the system broke 10 Packomania records for N between 101 and 114, improving the best known solutions by 2.4%–5.4%. The work demonstrates that a cost‑efficient, LLM‑driven approach can rapidly advance state‑of‑the‑art solutions in a complex optimization domain, suggesting broader potential for democratizing automated scientific discovery.
arXiv:2609.38095v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Backpropagation (BP) dominates deep learning but imposes a massive memory tax. For example, training OPT-30B with Adam requires $\approx$ 600GB of GPU...
arXiv:2608. 02391v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Tool-using large language model (LLM) agents produce long, multi-turn trajectories, making gradient-based post-training memory-intensive.
The paper critiques the common reinforcement‑learning approach of sampling tool subsets when the full set of tools is enumerable, showing that sampling leads to degraded policy estimates and increased reward sparsity in genomic reasoning tasks. It proposes Full‑Group Policy Optimization (FGPO), which evaluates every tool subset and precomputes rewards in a table, thereby eliminating the need for frozen‑reasoner calls during training. Experiments across five frozen reasoners and three genomic benchmarks demonstrate that FGPO consistently outperforms GRPO, improving average scores by 6.75 points and reducing the number of invoked tools per question.
arXiv:2602. 10233v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: LLM-guided evolutionary computation, most notably AlphaEvolve, has been remarkably successful in discovering novel mathematical constructions by solving challenging optimization problems.