Related papers: Zeroth-order Optimization for Composite Problems w…
This paper investigates the stochastic distributed nonconvex optimization problem of minimizing a global cost function formed by the summation of $n$ local cost functions. We solve such a problem by involving zeroth-order (ZO) information…
In this paper, we focus on solving an important class of nonconvex optimization problems which includes many problems for example signal processing over a networked multi-agent system and distributed learning over networks. Motivated by…
Zeroth-Order (ZO) optimization has emerged as a promising solution for fine-tuning LLMs under strict memory constraints, as it avoids the prohibitive memory cost of storing activations for backpropagation. However, existing ZO methods…
Derivative-free optimization has become an important technique used in machine learning for optimizing black-box models. To conduct updates without explicitly computing gradient, most current approaches iteratively sample a random search…
Constrained optimization problems where both the objective and constraints may be nonsmooth and nonconvex arise across many learning and data science settings. In this paper, we show for any Lipschitz, weakly convex objectives and…
In this paper, we establish for the first time the oracle complexity of a Riemannian inexact augmented Lagrangian (RiAL) method with the classical dual update for solving a class of Riemannian nonsmooth composite problems. By using the…
Zero-order (ZO) optimization is a powerful tool for dealing with realistic constraints. On the other hand, the gradient-tracking (GT) technique proved to be an efficient method for distributed optimization aiming to achieve consensus.…
We consider a class of structured, nonconvex, nonsmooth optimization problems under orthogonality constraints, where the objectives combine a smooth function, a nonsmooth concave function, and a nonsmooth weakly convex function. This class…
The augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) is one of the most useful methods for constrained optimization. Its convergence has been well established under convexity assumptions or smoothness assumptions, or under both assumptions. ALM may…
This paper is devoted to the theoretical and numerical investigation of an augmented Lagrangian method for the solution of optimization problems with geometric constraints. Specifically, we study situations where parts of the constraints…
We study stochastic zeroth-order (ZO) optimization of smooth nonconvex objectives under heavy-tailed sample-gradient noise. This regime is motivated by empirical evidence that gradient noise in modern machine learning can violate the…
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization, learning from finite differences of function evaluations without backpropagation, has recently regained attention in deep learning due to its memory efficiency and applicability to gray- or black-box…
Motivated by big data applications, first-order methods have been extremely popular in recent years. However, naive gradient methods generally converge slowly. Hence, much efforts have been made to accelerate various first-order methods.…
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization has become increasingly popular and important in fine-tuning large language models (LLMs), especially on edge devices due to its ability to adjust the model to local data without the need for memory-intensive…
To solve unmodeled optimization problems with hard constraints, this paper proposes a novel zeroth-order approach called Safe Zeroth-order Optimization using Linear Programs (SZO-LP). The SZO-LP method solves a linear program in each…
This paper proposes QPALM, a proximal augmented Lagrangian method based on quadratic approximations, for solving nonlinear programming problems with weakly convex objective and constraint functions. The algorithm is constructed by…
In this work we address the problem of convex optimization in a multi-agent setting where the objective is to minimize the mean of local cost functions whose derivatives are not available (e.g. black-box models). Moreover agents can only…
Recently, zeroth-order (ZO) optimization plays an essential role in scenarios where gradient information is inaccessible or unaffordable, such as black-box systems and resource-constrained environments. While existing adaptive methods such…
Zeroth-order methods are extensively used in machine learning applications where gradients are infeasible or expensive to compute, such as black-box attacks, reinforcement learning, and language model fine-tuning. Existing optimization…
This paper addresses a class of general nonsmooth and nonconvex composite optimization problems subject to nonlinear equality constraints. We assume that a part of the objective function and the functional constraints exhibit local…