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Related papers: Muon Optimizes Under Spectral Norm Constraints

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In large-scale optimization, the cheapness and effectiveness of update steps are the most crucial factors for a successful optimizer. Sign-based optimizers like Lion or Signum produce cheap per-step updates, whereas Muon's spectral…

Recently, a new optimization method based on the linear minimization oracle (LMO), called Muon, has been attracting increasing attention since it can train neural networks faster than existing adaptive optimization methods, such as Adam. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-01 Yuki Takezawa , Anastasia Koloskova , Xiaowen Jiang , Sebastian U. Stich

The Muon optimizer has recently demonstrated remarkable empirical success in training large language models. However, the theoretical understanding of its mechanisms remains limited. Current convergence guarantees for Muon rely heavily on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Yixuan Yang , Yuqing He , Song Li

The Muon optimizer, based on matrix orthogonalization, has recently shown faster convergence and better computational efficiency over AdamW in LLM pre-training. However, the memory overhead of maintaining high-precision optimizer states…

The Muon optimizer has recently attracted attention due to its orthogonalized first-order updates, and a deeper theoretical understanding of its convergence behavior is essential for guiding practical applications; however, existing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-06 Shuntaro Nagashima , Hideaki Iiduka

The recent empirical success of the Muon optimizer has renewed interest in non-Euclidean optimization, typically justified by similarities with second-order methods, and linear minimization oracle (LMO) theory. In this paper, we challenge…

The Muon optimizer has received considerable attention for its strong performance in training large language models, yet the design principle behind its matrix-gradient orthogonalization remains largely elusive. In this paper, we introduce…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-03 Zhehang Du , Weijie Su

The LION (evoLved sIgn mOmeNtum) optimizer for deep neural network training was found by Google via program search, with the simple sign update yet showing impressive performance in training large scale networks. Although previous studies…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-13 Yiming Dong , Huan Li , Zhouchen Lin

Recent advances in spectral optimization, notably Muon, have demonstrated that constraining update steps to the Stiefel manifold can significantly accelerate training and improve generalization. However, Muon implicitly assumes an isotropic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Yechen Zhang , Shuhao Xing , Junhao Huang , Kai Lv , Yunhua Zhou , Xipeng Qiu , Qipeng Guo , Kai Chen

Orthogonalized-update optimizers such as Muon improve training of matrix-valued parameters, but existing extensions typically either rescale updates after orthogonalization or use heavier whitening-based preconditioners before it. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Da Chang , Qiankun Shi , Lvgang Zhang , Yu Li , Ruijie Zhang , Yao Lu , Yongxiang Liu , Ganzhao Yuan

The Muon optimizer is consistently faster than Adam in training Large Language Models (LLMs), yet the mechanism underlying its success remains unclear. This paper demystifies this mechanism through the lens of associative memory. By…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Shuche Wang , Fengzhuo Zhang , Jiaxiang Li , Cunxiao Du , Chao Du , Tianyu Pang , Zhuoran Yang , Mingyi Hong , Vincent Y. F. Tan

Lion optimizer is a popular learning-based optimization algorithm in machine learning, which shows impressive performance in training many deep learning models. Although convergence property of the Lion optimizer has been studied, its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-17 Feihu Huang , Guanyi Zhang , Songcan Chen

The Muon optimizer has rapidly emerged as a powerful, geometry-aware alternative to AdamW, demonstrating strong performance in large-scale training of neural networks. However, a critical theory-practice disconnect exists: Muon's efficiency…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Egor Shulgin , Sultan AlRashed , Francesco Orabona , Peter Richtárik

DiLoCo is a powerful framework for training large language models (LLMs), enabling larger optimal batch sizes and increased accelerator utilization under networking constraints. However, DiLoCo's performance has been shown to degrade as the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-26 Benjamin Thérien , Xiaolong Huang , Aaron Defazio , Irina Rish , Eugene Belilovsky

Neural network (NN) training is inherently a large-scale matrix optimization problem, yet the matrix structure of NN parameters has long been overlooked. Recently, the optimizer Muon \citep{jordanmuon}, which explicitly exploits this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Chuan He , Zhanwang Deng , Zhaosong Lu

Physics-informed neural networks and neural operators often suffer from severe optimization difficulties caused by ill-conditioned gradients, multi-scale spectral behavior, and stiffness induced by physical constraints. Recently, the Muon…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-19 Binghang Lu , Jiahao Zhang , Guang Lin

Muon is a recently proposed optimizer that enforces orthogonality in parameter updates by projecting gradients onto the Stiefel manifold, leading to stable and efficient training in large-scale deep neural networks. Meanwhile, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-18 Hideaki Iiduka

Muon updates matrix parameters via the matrix sign of the gradient and has shown strong empirical gains, yet its dynamics and scaling behavior remain unclear in theory. We study Muon in a linear associative memory model with softmax…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Binghui Li , Kaifei Wang , Han Zhong , Pinyan Lu , Liwei Wang

Adversarial training (AT) remains one of the most reliable empirical defenses against adversarial attacks. Its robustness critically depends on how the underlying min-max objective is optimized. In practice, Stochastic Gradient Descent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Jun Yan , Weiquan Huang , Jiankai Zuo , Yujian Mo , Xi Fang , Chengliang Wu , Zeming Wei

Many optimizers can be interpreted as steepest-descent methods under norm-induced geometries, and thus inherit corresponding implicit biases. We introduce \nameA{} (\fullname{}), which combines spectral control from orthogonalized update…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Zixiao Wang , Yifei Shen , Huishuai Zhang