arXiv Machine Learning

WSqD: A Horizon-Free Learning Rate Schedule for Large Model Training

arXiv:2607. 10959v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Standard learning rate schedules such as cosine annealing are tied to a fixed training horizon, limiting their ability to accommodate post hoc horizon extension.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

ExpTest: Loss-Curve Hypothesis Testing for Autonomous Learning-Rate Selection in Deep Neural Networks

ExpTest is an autonomous learning‑rate controller that uses the training loss curve as an online signal to perform sequential statistical tests on theoretically motivated windows, detecting convergent behavior and triggering learning‑rate reductions. It combines a covariance‑based initial learning‑rate estimate, curvature‑motivated window sizing, and a two‑phase test‑driven decay, relying on the approximately exponential decay predicted under linearized network dynamics. Experiments on regression, classification, forecasting, and natural‑language tasks across various architectures show that ExpTest achieves competitive performance compared to hand‑tuned SGD baselines and recent learning‑rate‑free methods, without requiring manual initial learning‑rate selection or predefined scheduling.

By Zan Chaudhry, Naoko Mizuno
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 30

Why Do We Need Warm-up? A Theoretical Perspective

arXiv:2510. 03164v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Learning rate warm-up -- increasing the learning rate at the beginning of training -- has become a ubiquitous heuristic in modern deep learning, yet its theoretical foundations remain poorly understood.

By Foivos Alimisis, Rustem Islamov, Aurelien Lucchi
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 7

Optimizer Memory Schedules for Outscaling the Overtraining Axis

The paper studies how different optimizers perform as training duration (overtraining) increases, focusing on matrix‑preconditioned methods (Muon, SOAP) and a momentum‑scheduled method (ADANA) compared to AdamW. Across models ranging from 51M to 253M parameters and overtraining factors up to 256×, the authors find that optimal learning‑rate schedules, weight‑decay coefficients, and memory settings shift with horizon, and that ADANA consistently outperforms AdamW, especially with log‑time weight decay and momentum cooldown. Muon and SOAP maintain roughly constant token‑efficiency advantages, with SOAP potentially improving at the highest overtraining levels.

By Katie Everett, Shikai Qiu