The paper evaluates ten deep learning optimizers across models ranging from 0.1B to 1.2B parameters and varying data-to-model ratios, highlighting that fair comparisons require rigorous hyperparameter tuning and end-of-training evaluations. It finds that claimed speedups over AdamW are lower than advertised, dropping to only 1.1× for the largest models, and that intermediate checkpoint comparisons can mislead due to learning‑rate decay. The study shows that matrix‑based optimizers like Muon and Soap achieve the highest speedups, but these benefits diminish as model size increases.
By Kaiyue Wen, David Hall, Tengyu Ma, Percy Liang
arXiv:2607. 15745v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Common practice when training Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) is to use randomly shuffled mini-batches.
By Anxhelo Shehu, Enes Stastoli, Arben Cela
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:2606. 13894v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: AdamW is a default optimizer for modern deep learning, but its first and second moment states add roughly two parameter-sized buffers to training memory.
By Nadav Benedek, Tomer Koren, Ohad Fried
The Well is a 15‑terabyte benchmark covering 16 physical simulation domains, aimed at evaluating machine learning surrogate models for complex systems. Baseline neural operator results were presented as illustrative, with minimal hyperparameter tuning and a strict 12‑hour per‑run limit. A brief hyperparameter search on the Tucker‑factorized Fourier Neural Operator, using only a single input timestep, lowered VRMSE below most published baselines on 15 of 17 tasks, showing that modest tuning can dramatically improve performance.
By Yash Pincha, Andy Dimnaku, Andrew Chiang, Adarsh Ganeshram, Valentin Duruisseaux, Anima Anandkumar
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