Related papers: Revisiting Zeroth-Order Optimization for Memory-Ef…

Zeroth-order (ZO) fine-tuning is attractive for large language models because it replaces backpropagation with forward objective evaluations. Existing implementations nevertheless execute ZO algorithms inside conventional training loops,…

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is a subset of gradient-free optimization that emerges in many signal processing and machine learning applications. It is used for solving optimization problems similarly to gradient-based methods. However, it…

Fine-tuning language models (LMs) with the Adam optimizer often demands excessive memory, limiting accessibility. The "in-place" version of Stochastic Gradient Descent (IP-SGD) and Memory-Efficient Zeroth-order Optimizer (MeZO) have been…

Fine-tuning pre-trained speech foundation models for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is prevalent, yet constrained by substantial GPU memory requirements. We introduce ZO-ASR, a memory-efficient Zeroth-Order (ZO) method that avoids…

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) has achieved remarkable performance across various natural language processing tasks, yet it demands more and more memory as model sizes keep growing. To address this issue, the recently proposed…

Zeroth-order or derivative-free optimization (MeZO) is an attractive strategy for finetuning large language models (LLMs) because it eliminates the memory overhead of backpropagation. However, it converges slowly due to the inherent curse…

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization has emerged as a promising alternative to gradient-based backpropagation methods, particularly for black-box optimization and large language model (LLM) fine-tuning. However, ZO methods often suffer from slow…

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) remains resource-intensive due to their sheer scale. While zeroth-order (ZO) optimization provides a memory-efficient alternative by eliminating backward passes, its application to…

Optimizing large-scale nonconvex problems, common in deep learning, demands balancing rapid convergence with computational efficiency. First-order (FO) optimizers, which serve as today's baselines, provide fast convergence and good…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized Natural Language Processing (NLP) but demand massive GPU resources for training. Lowering the threshold for LLMs training would encourage greater participation from researchers, benefiting…

Fine-tuning LLMs is necessary for various dedicated downstream tasks, but classic backpropagation-based fine-tuning methods require substantial GPU memory. To this end, a recent work, MeZO, which relies solely on forward passes to fine-tune…

Training large language models (LLMs) relies on adaptive optimizers such as Adam, which introduce extra operations and require significantly more memory to maintain first- and second-order moments than SGD. While recent works such as…

Classical optimization theory establishes that zeroth-order (ZO) algorithms suffer from a dimension-dependent slowdown, with convergence rates typically scaling with the model dimension compared to first-order methods. However, in contrast…

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is being recognized as a simple yet powerful alternative to standard backpropagation (BP)-based training. Notably, ZO optimization allows for training with only forward passes and (almost) the same memory as…

Federated fine-tuning offers a promising approach for tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) on edge devices while preserving data privacy. However, fine-tuning these models on edge devices remains challenging due to high memory,…

Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization has become a popular technique for solving machine learning (ML) problems when first-order (FO) information is difficult or impossible to obtain. However, the scalability of ZO optimization remains an open…

Forward-mode automatic differentiation (FmAD) and zero-order (ZO) optimization have been proposed as memory-efficient alternatives to backpropagation (BP) for gradient computation, especially in low-resource settings. However, their…

This report examines the fine-tuning of Large Language Models (LLMs), integrating theoretical insights with practical applications. It outlines the historical evolution of LLMs from traditional Natural Language Processing (NLP) models to…

Differentially private stochastic gradient descent (DP-SGD) allows models to be trained in a privacy-preserving manner, but has proven difficult to scale to the era of foundation models. We introduce DP-ZO, a private fine-tuning framework…

The efficacy of large language models (LLMs) in understanding and generating natural language has aroused a wide interest in developing prompt-based methods to harness the power of black-box LLMs. Existing methodologies usually prioritize a…