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.
arXiv:2608. 03197v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: 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.
By Jiaxin Deng, Junbiao Pang
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
The paper investigates the "edge of stability" phenomenon in deep learning, where Hessian eigenvalues remain stable above a classically predicted unstable threshold. It shows that many first‑order optimizers, including gradient descent, can violate this stability bound by up to a factor of 21.1, and that this deviation depends systematically on the optimizer used. The authors propose a new stability threshold based on the directional Hessian and gradient‑alignment score, which removes optimizer‑dependent offsets and offers consistent predictions while providing diagnostic tools to understand how optimizers balance temporal and spatial budgets.
By Jaerin Lee, Kyoung Mu Lee
arXiv:2301. 06308v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Sharpness-aware minimization (SAM) is a training method that seeks to find flat minima in deep learning, resulting in state-of-the-art performance across various domains.
By Hoki Kim, Jinseong Park, Yujin Choi, Jaewook Lee
arXiv:2609.07666v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Full-parameter fine-tuning of large language models has substantial memory costs because backpropagation stores activations and gradients. Zeroth-order...
By Yuyang Wang, Haoyu Yao, Pengcheng Xie