English

An iterative K-FAC algorithm for Deep Learning

Machine Learning 2021-01-05 v1 Numerical Analysis Numerical Analysis Machine Learning

Abstract

Kronecker-factored Approximate Curvature (K-FAC) method is a high efficiency second order optimizer for the deep learning. Its training time is less than SGD(or other first-order method) with same accuracy in many large-scale problems. The key of K-FAC is to approximates Fisher information matrix (FIM) as a block-diagonal matrix where each block is an inverse of tiny Kronecker factors. In this short note, we present CG-FAC -- an new iterative K-FAC algorithm. It uses conjugate gradient method to approximate the nature gradient. This CG-FAC method is matrix-free, that is, no need to generate the FIM matrix, also no need to generate the Kronecker factors A and G. We prove that the time and memory complexity of iterative CG-FAC is much less than that of standard K-FAC algorithm.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2101.00218,
  title  = {An iterative K-FAC algorithm for Deep Learning},
  author = {Yingshi Chen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.00218},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

5 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T21:41:08.536Z