arXiv Machine Learning By Ran Tian, Courtney Paquette

Simulating Training Spikes of Deep Neural Networks by Layer-wise Random Feature Models

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The paper investigates intermittent spikes in loss observed during the pre‑training of large language models. It demonstrates that simple quadratic models with heavy‑tailed, power‑law distributed inputs can reproduce these spikes, and introduces a theoretical framework and simulation algorithm to model per‑layer training dynamics of deep neural networks. In a case study using an Adam configuration with β2 close to 1, the simulation predicts spiky behavior from a checkpoint and suggests a β2 schedule that empirically improves performance.

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arXiv AI
Jun 2

Memory-Efficient LLM Training with Dynamic Sparsity: From Stability to Practical Scaling

arXiv:2606. 00888v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Dynamic Sparse Training (DST) offers a promising paradigm for improving the training and inference efficiency of deep neural networks; however, we find that in large language model training, DST can suffer from optimization instability, manifested as loss spikes after topology updates.

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arXiv Machine Learning
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Grokking or Glitching? How Low-Precision Drives Slingshot Loss Spikes

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By Hanqing Liu, Jianjun Cao, Yuanze Li, Zijian Zhou
arXiv Machine Learning
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Prototype Language Models

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By Dan Ley, Giang Nguyen, Himabindu Lakkaraju, Julius Adebayo