In this paper we study several classes of stochastic optimization algorithms enriched with heavy ball momentum. Among the methods studied are: stochastic gradient descent, stochastic Newton, stochastic proximal point and stochastic dual subspace ascent. This is the first time momentum variants of several of these metho…
Stochastic proximal point algorithm with momentum converges faster and is more stable than standard methods.
problem Improving convergence and stability of stochastic optimization methods.
method Developed and analyzed the convergence and stability of the stochastic proximal point algorithm with momentum (SPPAM).
result SPPAM converges faster and is more stable than standard stochastic proximal point algorithm (SPPA) and stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM).
New method shows stochastic momentum can converge quickly on optimization problems.
problem Improving convergence of stochastic optimization methods.
method Stochastic heavy ball momentum with minibatching.
result Stochastic heavy ball momentum retains fast linear rate on quadratic problems.
Improved loss scaling for stochastic momentum algorithms in high dimensions.
problem Improving loss scaling for stochastic momentum algorithms in high dimensions.
method Dimension-adapted Nesterov acceleration (DANA) scales momentum hyperparameters based on model size and data complexity.
result DANA improves loss scaling exponents across various data and target complexities.
The paper analyzes how hyperparameters affect SGD with momentum's convergence rate.
problem The role of hyperparameters in SGD with momentum's convergence rate.
method Theoretical analysis using a hyperparameters-dependent stochastic differential equation (hp-dependent SDE).
result The optimal linear rate of convergence depends on both the learning rate and the momentum coefficient.
A new accelerated method with simpler momentum update rules.
problem Optimizing parameters in machine learning models.
method Proposes a novel accelerated stochastic gradient method with simpler momentum update rules.
result The method outperforms Sgdm and Adam in practical problems.
New method uses momentum to converge in DC optimization with small batches.
problem Lack of convergence properties for stochastic difference-of-convex optimization with small batch sizes.
method Introduces momentum to enable convergence under standard assumptions for any batch size.
result Proves convergence of the algorithm under smoothness and bounded variance assumptions.
Error estimates found between SGD with momentum and Langevin diffusion.
problem Quantifying the difference between SGD with momentum and Langevin diffusion.
method Established error estimates using 1-Wasserstein and total variation distances.
result Quantitative error estimates between SGD with momentum and underdamped Langevin diffusion.
Momentum affects optimization differently at small vs large batch sizes near instability.
problem Understanding how momentum impacts optimization near the edge of stability.
method Demonstrated through batch-size dependent behavior of SGD with momentum.
result Momentum operates in two distinct regimes: amplifying stochastic fluctuations at small batch sizes and stabilizing at large batch sizes.
Recently, {\it stochastic momentum} methods have been widely adopted in training deep neural networks. However, their convergence analysis is still underexplored at the moment, in particular for non-convex optimization. This paper fills the gap between practice and theory by developing a basic convergence analysis of t…
New algorithm Momentum-QNG improves optimization of quantum circuits.
problem Optimizing variational quantum circuits to avoid local minima.
method Applied Langevin dynamics to QNG, introducing momentum term.
result Momentum-QNG outperforms basic QNG and other optimizers.
Analysis of momentum methods on quadratic models, showing SGD's superiority.
problem Analysis of stochastic gradient algorithms with momentum on quadratic models.
method Inspired by random matrix theory, exact characterization of loss values.
result Stochastic heavy-ball momentum does not improve over SGD in the strongly convex setting.
Proposes EDM algorithm to accelerate model training in distributed networks.
problem Hindered effectiveness of distributed stochastic optimization algorithms due to data heterogeneity and network sparsity.
method Introduces Exact-Diffusion with Momentum (EDM) algorithm, incorporating momentum techniques to mitigate bias and enhance convergence rate.
result EDM algorithm converges sub-linearly to the optimal solution, radius independent of data heterogeneity, for non-convex objective functions.
Momentum SGD fails to track nonstationary optima due to drift amplification.
problem Tracking nonstationary optima in stochastic optimization.
method Theoretical analysis of SGD and momentum variants under strong convexity and smoothness.
result Momentum incurs a drift-amplification penalty that diverges as the momentum parameter approaches 1, leading to systematic lag.
Unified algorithm for stochastic optimization with time-varying momentum converges under general conditions.
problem Optimizing functions with time-varying gradients and biases.
method Unified algorithm using a time-varying momentum term.
result Convergence of the unified algorithm under general conditions.
New methods solve optimization problems with heavy-tailed noise, improving upon existing complexity bounds.
problem Optimization problems with heavy-tailed noise and weakly average smoothness.
method Normalized stochastic first-order methods with Polyak, multi-extrapolated, and recursive momentum.
result First-order oracle complexity results for finding approximate stochastic stationary points under heavy-tailed noise.
The use of momentum in stochastic gradient methods has become a widespread practice in machine learning. Different variants of momentum, including heavy-ball momentum, Nesterov's accelerated gradient (NAG), and quasi-hyperbolic momentum (QHM), have demonstrated success on various tasks. Despite these empirical successe…
Paper analyzes high probability convergence of adaptive SGD with momentum.
problem Theoretical understanding of adaptive SGD with momentum in nonconvex settings is incomplete.
method High probability analysis under weak assumptions.
result First high probability convergence proof for gradients to zero in Delayed AdaGrad with momentum.
Nesterov's momentum trick is famously known for accelerating gradient descent, and has been proven useful in building fast iterative algorithms. However, in the stochastic setting, counterexamples exist and prevent Nesterov's momentum from providing similar acceleration, even if the underlying problem is convex and fin…
The paper improves Kaczmarz algorithm with momentum for linear least squares.
problem Improving convergence of the Kaczmarz algorithm for linear least squares.
method Integrates geometrically smoothed momentum into the randomized Kaczmarz algorithm.
result Proves expected error reduction in singular vector directions.
This work studies the implicit bias of mini-batch SGD in classification.
problem Understanding the implicit bias of mini-batch SGD in multi-class classification.
method Characterizes how batch size, momentum, and variance reduction affect convergence and max-margin behavior under different norms.
result Momentum enables small-batch convergence to an approximate max-margin solution, while variance reduction recovers the exact full-batch bias.
STORM-PG uses momentum for faster policy gradient updates.
problem Improving policy gradient methods for reinforcement learning.
method Introduces STORM-PG, a SARAH-based algorithm with exponential moving average.
result Achieves O(1/ε3) sample complexity, matching best-known rate. The article examines in some detail the convergence rate and mean-square-error performance of momentum stochastic gradient methods in the constant step-size and slow adaptation regime. The results establish that momentum methods are equivalent to the standard stochastic gradient method with a re-scaled (larger) step-si…
The paper analyzes convergence in SGD with momentum and proposes a diagnostic test.
problem Detecting convergence in stochastic gradient descent with momentum.
method Analyzes the transient and stationary phases of SGD with momentum, constructs a statistical diagnostic test.
result The proposed diagnostic test effectively detects convergence in the stationary phase of SGD with momentum.
Optimization algorithms with momentum, e.g., (ADAM), have been widely used for building deep learning models due to the faster convergence rates compared with stochastic gradient descent (SGD). Momentum helps accelerate SGD in the relevant directions in parameter updating, which can minify the oscillations of parameter…
New insights into training machine learning models with momentum.
problem Lack of theoretical understanding on the generalization error of momentum-based methods.
method Analyzed modified momentum-based update rule (SGDEM) for smooth Lipschitz loss functions.
result SGDEM admits an upper-bound on the generalization error for smooth Lipschitz loss functions.
Paper proposes an algorithm to solve complex minimax problems efficiently.
problem Stochastic nonconvex-concave minimax problems in various fields.
method Accelerated first-order regularized momentum descent ascent algorithm (FORMDA).
result Achieves best-known complexity bound of ildeO(ε−6.5) for single-loop algorithms. Stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) methods are Bayesian analogs to popular stochastic optimization methods; however, this connection is not well studied. We explore this relationship by applying simulated annealing to an SGMCMC algorithm. Furthermore, we extend recent SG-MCMC methods with two key co…
New method finds near-optimal solutions for non-convex optimization problems.
problem Finding near-optimal solutions for non-convex optimization problems.
method Riemannian stochastic recursive momentum method
result Achieves a near-optimal complexity of ildeO(ε−3). Integrating adaptive learning rate and momentum techniques into SGD leads to a large class of efficiently accelerated adaptive stochastic algorithms, such as AdaGrad, RMSProp, Adam, AccAdaGrad, \textit{etc}. In spite of their effectiveness in practice, there is still a large gap in their theories of convergences, espec…
Stochastic momentum methods have been widely adopted in training deep neural networks. However, their theoretical analysis of convergence of the training objective and the generalization error for prediction is still under-explored. This paper aims to bridge the gap between practice and theory by analyzing the stochast…
In this paper we study the problem of convergence and generalization error bound of stochastic momentum for deep learning from the perspective of regularization. To do so, we first interpret momentum as solving an ℓ2-regularized minimization problem to learn the offsets between arbitrary two successive model para…
New minibatching strategy reduces stochastic gradient bias in optimisation.
problem Reducing bias in stochastic gradient descent.
method Symmetric Minibatching Strategy combined with momentum.
result Reduced stochastic gradient bias from O(h2) to O(h4). New insights into using momentum for non-convex optimization.
problem Improving training of non-convex models like deep neural networks.
method Developed a Lyapunov analysis of SGD with momentum using stochastic primal averaging.
result Precise conditions under which SGD+M outperforms SGD and optimal hyper-parameter schedules.
Momentum improves deep learning generalization by stabilizing noise and learning features.
problem Improving generalization in deep learning models.
method Empirical and theoretical analysis of gradient descent with momentum (GD+M) vs. gradient descent (GD) in binary classification tasks.
result GD+M outperforms GD in generalization, especially in datasets with shared features and varying margins.
A new Bayesian filtering method speeds up stochastic Newton optimization.
problem Minimizing log-convex functions using stochastic methods.
method Contextualizes the problem as Bayesian inference, applying Bayesian filtering to update estimates.
result Establishes conditions for diminishing effect of older observations, akin to momentum.
The problem of minimizing sum-of-nonconvex functions (i.e., convex functions that are average of non-convex ones) is becoming increasingly important in machine learning, and is the core machinery for PCA, SVD, regularized Newton's method, accelerated non-convex optimization, and more. We show how to provably obtain an …
Polyak-Ruppert CLT for SA-Adam with momentum and non-convergent adaptive preconditioning
problem Adaptive optimizers combining momentum and non-convergent preconditioning
method Proving positive drift stability and a non-autonomous Polyak-Ruppert CLT for SA-Adam
result The iterate-marginal covariance is exactly the plain stochastic gradient descent (SGD) sandwich
Stochastic momentum methods trade compute efficiency for serial runtime.
problem Stochastic momentum methods trade compute efficiency for serial runtime.
method Stochastic HB and ASGD for consistent linear regression with Gaussian covariates.
result HB preserves SGD-level CE over a larger batch-size window, allowing larger batches to reduce serial runtime until HB reaches its deterministic accelerated scale.
With the rapid growth of data, distributed momentum stochastic gradient descent~(DMSGD) has been widely used in distributed learning, especially for training large-scale deep models. Due to the latency and limited bandwidth of the network, communication has become the bottleneck of distributed learning. Communication c…
SUSTAIN algorithm tackles stochastic bilevel optimization with near-optimal complexity.
problem Stochastic bilevel optimization problems with specific convexity and smoothness properties.
method SUSTAIN algorithm using single-timescale double-momentum stochastic approximation.
result SUSTAIN achieves near-optimal complexity for finding ε-stationary solutions.
Asynchronous momentum stochastic gradient descent algorithms (Async-MSGD) is one of the most popular algorithms in distributed machine learning. However, its convergence properties for these complicated nonconvex problems is still largely unknown, because of the current technical limit. Therefore, in this paper, we pro…
While momentum-based accelerated variants of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) are widely used when training machine learning models, there is little theoretical understanding on the generalization error of such methods. In this work, we first show that there exists a convex loss function for which the stability gap fo…
CoolMomentum combines momentum and Simulated Annealing for deep learning optimization.
problem Global optimization of non-convex functions in deep learning.
method Discretized Langevin dynamics with Simulated Annealing.
result CoolMomentum achieves high accuracy on Resnet-20 on Cifar-10 and Efficientnet-B0 on Imagenet.
New SGD algorithm finds critical points faster with second-order corrections.
problem Finding critical points in non-convex optimization efficiently.
method Uses Hessian-vector products to correct momentum bias in SGD.
result Finds ε-critical points in O(ε−3) time. MSGD outperforms SGD in overparametrized settings with faster convergence rates.
problem Optimization of non-convex functions with momentum.
method Momentum Stochastic Gradient Descent (MSGD) with rigorous analysis.
result MSGD converges exponentially faster than SGD in overparametrized settings.
Recently, research on accelerated stochastic gradient descent methods (e.g., SVRG) has made exciting progress (e.g., linear convergence for strongly convex problems). However, the best-known methods (e.g., Katyusha) requires at least two auxiliary variables and two momentum parameters. In this paper, we propose a fast …
New step-size methods improve SHB convergence for stochastic optimization.
problem Tuning step-size and momentum parameters in SHB is challenging.
method Proposed MomSPSmax, MomDecSPS, and MomAdaSPS for SHB. result Convergence guarantees for SHB to solution neighborhoods and exact minimizers.