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Fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) has proven effective for a variety of downstream tasks. However, as LLMs grow in size, the memory demands for backpropagation become increasingly prohibitive. Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization methods…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-25 Ziming Yu , Pan Zhou , Sike Wang , Jia Li , Mi Tian , Hua Huang

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

In the evolving landscape of natural language processing (NLP), fine-tuning pre-trained Large Language Models (LLMs) with first-order (FO) optimizers like SGD and Adam has become standard. Yet, as LLMs grow {in size}, the substantial memory…

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities across numerous NLP tasks. Nevertheless, conventional first-order fine-tuning techniques impose heavy memory demands, creating practical obstacles to real-world…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Zhendong Mi , Qitao Tan , Xiaodong Yu , Zining Zhu , Geng Yuan , Shaoyi Huang

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) using zeroth-order optimization (ZO) offers a memory-efficient alternative to gradient-based methods but suffers from slower convergence and unstable optimization due to noisy gradient estimates.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-24 Jikai Long , Zijian Hu , Xiaodong Yu , Jianwen Xie , Zhaozhuo Xu

We investigate the effectiveness of adaptive zeroth-order (ZO) optimization for memory-constrained fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs). Contrary to prior claims, we show that adaptive ZO methods such as ZO-Adam offer no convergence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Hassan Dbouk , Nidham Gazagnadou , Matthias Reisser , Christos Louizos

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) with backpropagation achieves high performance but incurs substantial memory overhead, limiting scalability on resource-constrained hardware. Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization provides a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Shuo Wang , Ziyu Chen , Ming Tang

Fine-tuning is powerful for adapting large language models to downstream tasks, but it often results in huge memory usages. A promising approach to mitigate this is using Zeroth-Order (ZO) optimization, which estimates gradients to replace…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-15 Fei Wang , Li Shen , Liang Ding , Chao Xue , Ye Liu , Changxing Ding

Language Models (LLMs) are often quantized to lower precision to reduce the memory cost and latency in inference. However, quantization often degrades model performance, thus fine-tuning is required for various down-stream tasks.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-19 Jiajun Zhou , Yifan Yang , Kai Zhen , Ziyue Liu , Yequan Zhao , Ershad Banijamali , Athanasios Mouchtaris , Ngai Wong , Zheng Zhang

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

Zeroth-order optimization (ZO) is a memory-efficient strategy for fine-tuning Large Language Models using only forward passes. However, the application of ZO fine-tuning in memory-constrained settings such as mobile phones and laptops is…

Large language models (LLMs) excel across various tasks, but standard first-order (FO) fine-tuning demands considerable memory, significantly limiting real-world deployment. Recently, zeroth-order (ZO) optimization stood out as a promising…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-04 Qitao Tan , Jun Liu , Zheng Zhan , Caiwei Ding , Yanzhi Wang , Xiaolong Ma , Jaewoo Lee , Jin Lu , Geng Yuan

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

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

While fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) for specific tasks often yields impressive results, it comes at the cost of memory inefficiency due to back-propagation in gradient-based training. Memory-efficient Zeroth-order (MeZO)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Yong Liu , Zirui Zhu , Chaoyu Gong , Minhao Cheng , Cho-Jui Hsieh , Yang You

Parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) significantly reduces memory costs when adapting large language models (LLMs) for downstream applications. However, traditional first-order (FO) fine-tuning algorithms incur substantial memory overhead…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-11 Yiming Chen , Yuan Zhang , Liyuan Cao , Kun Yuan , Zaiwen Wen

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Lejs Deen Behric , Liang Zhang , Bingcong Li , Kiran Koshy Thekumparampil

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,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Zelin Li , Caiwen Ding

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) often faces GPU memory bottlenecks: the backward pass of first-order optimizers like Adam increases memory usage to more than 10 times the inference level (e.g., 633 GB for OPT-30B). Zeroth-order…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-01 Sizhe Dang , Yangyang Guo , Yanjun Zhao , Haishan Ye , Xiaodong Zheng , Guang Dai , Ivor Tsang

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) with classic first-order optimizers entails prohibitive GPU memory due to the backpropagation process. Recent works have turned to zeroth-order optimizers for fine-tuning, which save substantial…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-19 Yanjun Zhao , Sizhe Dang , Haishan Ye , Guang Dai , Yi Qian , Ivor W. Tsang
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