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Git Re-Basin: Merging Models Modulo Permutation Symmetries (arxiv.org)
4 points by yn0nym00s on Sep 13, 2022 | hide | past | pdf | 1 comment on HN

In plain words: Two separately trained networks can have their hidden units shuffled, so rearranging one model's units to match the other lets their weights be averaged into one working model. Averaging two image classifiers kept full accuracy halfway between them, unlike direct averaging, which drops it.

Abstract · Git Re-Basin: Merging Models modulo Permutation Symmetries

The success of deep learning is due in large part to our ability to solve certain massive non-convex optimization problems with relative ease. Though non-convex optimization is NP-hard, simple algorithms -- often variants of stochastic gradient descent -- exhibit surprising effectiveness in fitting large neural networks in practice. We argue that neural network loss landscapes often contain (nearly) a single basin after accounting for all possible permutation symmetries of hidden units a la Entezari et al. 2021. We introduce three algorithms to permute the units of one model to bring them into alignment with a reference model in order to merge the two models in weight space. This transformation produces a functionally equivalent set of weights that lie in an approximately convex basin near the reference model. Experimentally, we demonstrate the single basin phenomenon across a variety of model architectures and datasets, including the first (to our knowledge) demonstration of zero-barrier linear mode connectivity between independently trained ResNet models on CIFAR-10. Additionally, we identify intriguing phenomena relating model width and training time to mode connectivity. Finally, we discuss shortcomings of the linear mode connectivity hypothesis, including a counterexample to the single basin theory.

Samuel K. Ainsworth, Jonathan Hayase, Siddhartha Srinivasa
arXiv:2209.04836 · cs.LG, cs.AI · submitted Sep 11, 2022 · updated Mar 1, 2023
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The only connection this has to Git is the pun on git rebase in the title.