In plain words: Fine-tuned models that work well sit near the middle of weight space, so averaging just two of them layer by layer lands close to that sweet spot. It beats the usual trick of averaging many fine-tuned models, using only two and barely extra computing.
Abstract
This paper introduces an efficient fine-tuning method for large pre-trained models, offering strong in-distribution (ID) and out-of-distribution (OOD) performance. Breaking away from traditional practices that need a multitude of fine-tuned models for averaging, our approach employs significantly fewer models to achieve final weights yet yield superior accuracy. Drawing from key insights in the weight space of fine-tuned weights, we uncover a strong link between the performance and proximity to the center of weight space. Based on this, we introduce a method that approximates a center-close weight using only two fine-tuned models, applicable during or after training. Our innovative layer-wise weight averaging technique surpasses state-of-the-art model methods such as Model Soup, utilizing only two fine-tuned models. This strategy can be aptly coined Model Stock, highlighting its reliance on selecting a minimal number of models to draw a more optimized-averaged model. We demonstrate the efficacy of Model Stock with fine-tuned models based upon pre-trained CLIP architectures, achieving remarkable performance on both ID and OOD tasks on the standard benchmarks, all while barely bringing extra computational demands. Our code and pre-trained models are available at https://github.com/naver-ai/model-stock.
Dong-Hwan Jang, Sangdoo Yun, Dongyoon Han
arXiv:2403.19522 · cs.LG, cs.CV · submitted Mar 28, 2024 · updated Aug 1, 2025
abstract · pdf · html · ECCV 2024 oral presenetation; Code at https://github.com/naver-ai/model-stock