Related papers: High-performance real-world optical computing trai…
Optical computing holds promise for high-speed, energy-efficient information processing, with diffractive optical networks emerging as a flexible platform for implementing task-specific transformations. A challenge, however, is the…
Large pre-trained language models (PLMs) have garnered significant attention for their versatility and potential for solving a wide spectrum of natural language processing (NLP) tasks. However, the cost of running these PLMs may be…
Traditional approaches to portfolio optimization, often rooted in Modern Portfolio Theory and solved via quadratic programming or evolutionary algorithms, struggle with scalability or flexibility, especially in scenarios involving complex…
We consider decentralized gradient-free optimization of minimizing Lipschitz continuous functions that satisfy neither smoothness nor convexity assumption. We propose two novel gradient-free algorithms, the Decentralized Gradient-Free…
Derivative-Free Optimization (DFO) involves methods that rely solely on evaluations of the objective function. One of the earliest strategies for designing DFO methods is to adapt first-order methods by replacing gradients with…
We consider $\min\{f(x):g(x) \le 0, ~x\in X\},$ where $X$ is a compact convex subset of $\RR^m$, and $f$ and $g$ are continuous convex functions defined on an open neighbourhood of $X$. We work in the setting of derivative-free…
Real-world black-box optimization often involves time-consuming or costly experiments and simulations. Multi-fidelity optimization (MFO) stands out as a cost-effective strategy that balances high-fidelity accuracy with computational…
Optimizing complex systems, from discovering therapeutic drugs to designing high-performance materials, remains a fundamental challenge across science and engineering, as the underlying rules are often unknown and costly to evaluate.…
We consider model-based derivative-free optimization (DFO) for large-scale problems, based on iterative minimization in random subspaces. We provide the first worst-case complexity bound for such methods for convergence to approximate…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is an effective technique for black-box optimization. However, its applicability is typically limited to moderate-budget problems due to the cubic complexity of fitting the Gaussian process (GP) surrogate model.…
We propose a gradient-free deep reinforcement learning algorithm to solve high-dimensional, finite-horizon stochastic control problems. Although the recently developed deep reinforcement learning framework has achieved great success in…
In physics and engineering, many processes are modeled using non-differentiable black-box simulators, making the optimization of such functions particularly challenging. To address such cases, inspired by the Gradient Theorem, we propose…
We present multiplexed gradient descent (MGD), a gradient descent framework designed to easily train analog or digital neural networks in hardware. MGD utilizes zero-order optimization techniques for online training of hardware neural…
Interest in derivative-free optimization (DFO) and "evolutionary strategies" (ES) has recently surged in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) community, with growing evidence that they can match state of the art methods for policy optimization…
Derivative-free - or zeroth-order - optimization (DFO) has gained recent attention for its ability to solve problems in a variety of application areas, including machine learning, particularly involving objectives which are stochastic…
When gradient-based methods are impractical, black-box optimization (BBO) provides a valuable alternative. However, BBO often struggles with high-dimensional problems and limited trial budgets. In this work, we propose a novel approach…
Mathematical optimization is a fundamental tool for decision-making in a wide range of applications. However, in many real-world scenarios, the parameters of the optimization problem are not known a priori and must be predicted from…
In this paper, we propose the StepDIRECT algorithm for derivative-free optimization (DFO), in which the black-box objective function has a stepwise landscape. Our framework is based on the well-known DIRECT algorithm. By incorporating the…
Optimization of very expensive black-box functions requires utilization of maximum information gathered by the process of optimization. Model Guided Sampling Optimization (MGSO) forms a more robust alternative to Jones'…
A major challenge in training large-scale machine learning models is configuring the training process to maximize model performance, i.e., finding the best training setup from a vast design space. In this work, we unlock a gradient-based…