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Recently, researchers observed that gradient descent for deep neural networks operates in an ``edge-of-stability'' (EoS) regime: the sharpness (maximum eigenvalue of the Hessian) is often larger than stability threshold $2/\eta$ (where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-22 Xingyu Zhu , Zixuan Wang , Xiang Wang , Mo Zhou , Rong Ge

Deep learning experiments by Cohen et al. [2021] using deterministic Gradient Descent (GD) revealed an Edge of Stability (EoS) phase when learning rate (LR) and sharpness (i.e., the largest eigenvalue of Hessian) no longer behave as in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-31 Sanjeev Arora , Zhiyuan Li , Abhishek Panigrahi

The Edge of Stability (EoS) is a phenomenon where the sharpness (largest eigenvalue) of the Hessian approaches and then hovers near the stability threshold $2/\eta$ during gradient descent (GD) with step size $\eta$. Despite (apparently)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Rustem Islamov , Michael Crawshaw , Jeremy Cohen , Robert Gower

Recent advances in deep learning optimization have unveiled two intriguing phenomena under large learning rates: Edge of Stability (EoS) and Progressive Sharpening (PS), challenging classical Gradient Descent (GD) analyses. Current research…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Liming Liu , Zixuan Zhang , Simon Du , Tuo Zhao

Recent research has observed that in machine learning optimization, gradient descent (GD) often operates at the edge of stability (EoS) [Cohen, et al., 2021], where the stepsizes are set to be large, resulting in non-monotonic losses…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-17 Jingfeng Wu , Vladimir Braverman , Jason D. Lee

Cohen et al. (2021) empirically study the evolution of the largest eigenvalue of the loss Hessian, also known as sharpness, along the gradient descent (GD) trajectory and observe the Edge of Stability (EoS) phenomenon. The sharpness…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-27 Minhak Song , Chulhee Yun

We discover restrained numerical instabilities in current training practices of deep networks with stochastic gradient descent (SGD), and its variants. We show numerical error (on the order of the smallest floating point bit and thus the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-13 Yuxin Sun , Dong Lao , Ganesh Sundaramoorthi , Anthony Yezzi

Recent research shows that when Gradient Descent (GD) is applied to neural networks, the loss almost never decreases monotonically. Instead, the loss oscillates as gradient descent converges to its ''Edge of Stability'' (EoS). Here, we find…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-23 Itai Kreisler , Mor Shpigel Nacson , Daniel Soudry , Yair Carmon

Traditional analyses of gradient descent show that when the largest eigenvalue of the Hessian, also known as the sharpness $S(\theta)$, is bounded by $2/\eta$, training is "stable" and the training loss decreases monotonically. Recent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-12 Alex Damian , Eshaan Nichani , Jason D. Lee

We empirically demonstrate that full-batch gradient descent on neural network training objectives typically operates in a regime we call the Edge of Stability. In this regime, the maximum eigenvalue of the training loss Hessian hovers just…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-24 Jeremy M. Cohen , Simran Kaur , Yuanzhi Li , J. Zico Kolter , Ameet Talwalkar

Recent findings (e.g., arXiv:2103.00065) demonstrate that modern neural networks trained by full-batch gradient descent typically enter a regime called Edge of Stability (EOS). In this regime, the sharpness, i.e., the maximum Hessian…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-04 Zhouzi Li , Zixuan Wang , Jian Li

In modern deep learning, weight decay is often credited with "stabilizing" training dynamics, diverging from its classical role as a static regularization penalty. We investigate a fundamental question: *does weight decay stabilize training…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Marius Saether , Amir Kolic , Tomaso Poggio , Pierfrancesco Beneventano

Deep neural networks trained using gradient descent with a fixed learning rate $\eta$ often operate in the regime of "edge of stability" (EOS), where the largest eigenvalue of the Hessian equilibrates about the stability threshold $2/\eta$.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-03 Avrajit Ghosh , Soo Min Kwon , Rongrong Wang , Saiprasad Ravishankar , Qing Qu

Variational Learning (VL) has recently gained popularity for training deep neural networks. Part of its empirical success can be explained by theories such as PAC-Bayes bounds, minimum description length and marginal likelihood, but little…

A widely believed explanation for the remarkable generalization capacities of overparameterized neural networks is that the optimization algorithms used for training induce an implicit bias towards benign solutions. To grasp this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-19 Maria Matveev , Vit Fojtik , Hung-Hsu Chou , Gitta Kutyniok , Johannes Maly

Recent work suggests that (stochastic) gradient descent self-organizes near an instability boundary, shaping both optimization and the solutions found. Momentum and mini-batch gradients are widely used in practical deep learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Arseniy Andreyev , Advikar Ananthkumar , Marc Walden , Tomaso Poggio , Pierfrancesco Beneventano

Classical optimization theory requires a small step-size for gradient-based methods to converge. Nevertheless, recent findings challenge the traditional idea by empirically demonstrating Gradient Descent (GD) converges even when the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-12 Peiyuan Zhang , Amin Karbasi

Recent experiments have shown that, often, when training a neural network with gradient descent (GD) with a step size $\eta$, the operator norm of the Hessian of the loss grows until it approximately reaches $2/\eta$, after which it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-07 Philip M. Long , Peter L. Bartlett

Gradient Descent (GD) is a powerful workhorse of modern machine learning thanks to its scalability and efficiency in high-dimensional spaces. Its ability to find local minimisers is only guaranteed for losses with Lipschitz gradients, where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-27 Lei Chen , Joan Bruna

Classical analyses of gradient descent (GD) define a stability threshold based on the largest eigenvalue of the loss Hessian, often termed sharpness. When the learning rate lies below this threshold, training is stable and the loss…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Lawrence Wang , Stephen J. Roberts
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