Related papers: Delving into Muon and Beyond: Deep Analysis and Ex…

Recently, the Muon optimizer based on matrix orthogonalization has demonstrated strong results in training small-scale language models, but the scalability to larger models has not been proven. We identify two crucial techniques for scaling…

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…

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…

In this paper, we propose DeMuon, a method for decentralized matrix optimization over a given communication topology. DeMuon incorporates matrix orthogonalization via Newton-Schulz iterations-a technique inherited from its centralized…

Orthogonalized-momentum optimizers such as Muon improve transformer training by approximately whitening/orthogonalizing matrix-valued momentum updates via a short polar-decomposition iteration. However, polar-factor approximations typically…

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…

Muon and related norm-constrained matrix optimizers have become central to large-scale learning problems. They are formulated as a linear maximization oracle (LMO) over an ambient matrix-norm ball in unconstrained Euclidean space. However,…

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…

The Muon optimizer has demonstrated remarkable empirical success in handling matrix-structured parameters for training neural networks. However, a significant gap remains between its practical performance and theoretical understanding.…

We introduce Pion, a spectrum-preserving optimizer for large language model (LLM) training based on orthogonal equivalence transformation. Unlike additive optimizers such as Adam and Muon, Pion updates each weight matrix through left and…

Muon and related normalized optimizers decouple the choice of update direction from the choice of step scale, but their practical performance remains sensitive to the scale of the normalized step. We study adaptive scaling rules for Muon in…

Adaptive optimizers such as Adam have achieved great success in training large-scale models like large language models and diffusion models. However, they often generalize worse than non-adaptive methods, such as SGD on classical…

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…

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…

Distributed training of large neural networks is bottlenecked by full-precision gradient communication and by coordinatewise optimizers that ignore the matrix structure of weight tensors. We propose Sign-Muon, a 1-bit, matrix-aware…

Recent empirical research has demonstrated that deep learning optimizers based on the linear minimization oracle (LMO) over specifically chosen Non-Euclidean norm balls, such as Muon and Scion, outperform Adam-type methods in the training…

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…

Optimizers leveraging the matrix structure in neural networks, such as Shampoo and Muon, are more data-efficient than element-wise algorithms like Adam and Signum. While in specific settings, Shampoo and Muon reduce to spectral descent…

Conventional wisdom in deep learning optimization dictates updating all layers at every step-a principle followed by all recent state-of-the-art optimizers such as Muon. In this work, we challenge this assumption, showing that full-network…

Large models recently are widely applied in artificial intelligence, so efficient training of large models has received widespread attention. More recently, a useful Muon optimizer is specifically designed for matrix-structured parameters…