Asynchronous Delayed Optimization With Time-Varying Minibatches
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Large-scale learning and optimization problems are often solved in parallel. In a master-worker distributed setup, worker nodes are most often assigned fixed-sized minibatches of data points to process. However, workers may take different amounts of time to complete their per-batch calculations. To deal with such variability in processing times, an alternative approach has recently been proposed wherein each worker is assigned a fixed duration to complete the calculations associated with each batch. This fixed-time approach results in time-varying minibatch sizes and has been shown to outperform the fixed minibatch approach in synchronous optimization. In this paper we make a number of contributions in the analysis and experimental verification of such systems. First, we formally present a system model of an asynchronous optimization scheme with variable-sized minibatches and derive the expected minibatch size. Second, we show that for our fixed-time asynchronous approach, the expected gradient staleness does not depend on the number of workers contrary to existing schemes. Third, we prove that for convex smooth objective functions the asynchronous variable minibatch method achieves the optimal regret and optimality gap bounds. Finally, we run experiments comparing the performances of the asynchronous fixed-time and fixed-minibatch methods. We present results for CIFAR-10 and ImageNet.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".