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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…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-04 Yifan Yang , Kai Zhen , Ershad Banijamal , Athanasios Mouchtaris , Zheng Zhang

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-26 Sihwan Park , Jihun Yun , SungYub Kim , Souvik Kundu , Eunho Yang

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…

Zeroth-order optimizers have recently emerged as a practical approach for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs), significantly reducing GPU memory consumption compared to traditional first-order methods. Yet, existing zeroth-order…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-02 Kairun Zhang , Haoyu Li , Yanjun Zhao , Yifan Sun , Huan Zhang

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) using standard first-order (FO) optimization often drives training toward sharp, poorly generalizing minima. Conversely, zeroth-order (ZO) methods offer stronger exploratory behavior without relying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-12 Feihu Jin , Ying Tan

The confluence of Federated Learning (FL) and Large Language Models (LLMs) is ushering in a new era in privacy-preserving natural language processing. However, the intensive memory requirements for fine-tuning LLMs pose significant…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Zhenqing Ling , Daoyuan Chen , Liuyi Yao , Yaliang Li , Ying Shen

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) with zeroth-order (ZO) optimization reduces memory by approximating gradients through function evaluations. However, existing methods essentially perform updates in a one-dimensional space, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-19 Jian Feng , Zhihong Huang

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Sijia Liu , Pin-Yu Chen , Bhavya Kailkhura , Gaoyuan Zhang , Alfred Hero , Pramod K. Varshney

On-device training enables the model to adapt to new data collected from the sensors by fine-tuning a pre-trained model. Users can benefit from customized AI models without having to transfer the data to the cloud, protecting the privacy.…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2024-04-04 Ji Lin , Ligeng Zhu , Wei-Ming Chen , Wei-Chen Wang , Chuang Gan , Song Han

Large deep learning models offer significant accuracy gains, but training billions to trillions of parameters is challenging. Existing solutions such as data and model parallelisms exhibit fundamental limitations to fit these models into…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-14 Samyam Rajbhandari , Jeff Rasley , Olatunji Ruwase , Yuxiong He

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…

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) has achieved remarkable success across various NLP tasks, but the substantial memory overhead during backpropagation remains a critical bottleneck, especially as model scales grow. Zeroth-order (ZO)…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-09 Feihu Jin , Shipeng Cen , Ying Tan

Back propagation (BP) is the default solution for gradient computation in neural network training. However, implementing BP-based training on various edge devices such as FPGA, microcontrollers (MCUs), and analog computing platforms face…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-12 Yequan Zhao , Hai Li , Ian Young , Zheng Zhang

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Jiahe Chen , Ziye Ma

Resource-constrained devices are increasingly the deployment targets of machine learning applications. Static models, however, do not always suffice for dynamic environments. On-device training of models allows for quick adaptability to new…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-10 Danilo Vucetic , Mohammadreza Tayaranian , Maryam Ziaeefard , James J. Clark , Brett H. Meyer , Warren J. Gross

Biosignals exhibit substantial cross-subject and cross-session variability, inducing severe domain shifts that degrade post-deployment performance for small, edge-oriented AI models. On-device adaptation is therefore essential to both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Run Wang , Victor J. B. Jung , Philip Wiese , Sebastian Frey , Giusy Spacone , Francesco Conti , Alessio Burrello , Luca Benini

In the realm of efficient on-device learning under extreme memory and computation constraints, a significant gap in successful approaches persists. Although considerable effort has been devoted to efficient inference, the main obstacle to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-12 Aël Quélennec , Enzo Tartaglione , Pavlo Mozharovskyi , Van-Tam Nguyen

Despite its importance for federated learning, continuous learning and many other applications, on-device training remains an open problem for EdgeAI. The problem stems from the large number of operations (e.g., floating point…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2023-03-29 Yuedong Yang , Guihong Li , Radu Marculescu

Fine-tuning models on edge devices like mobile phones would enable privacy-preserving personalization over sensitive data. However, edge training has historically been limited to relatively small models with simple architectures because…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-19 Shishir G. Patil , Paras Jain , Prabal Dutta , Ion Stoica , Joseph E. Gonzalez

While Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architectures substantially bolster the expressive power of large-language models, their prohibitive memory footprint severely impedes the practical deployment on resource-constrained edge devices, especially…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Yuchen Yang , Yaru Zhao , Pu Yang , Shaowei Wang , Zhi-Hua Zhou