AdaFisher: Adaptive Second Order Optimization via Fisher Information

TL;DR

AdaFisher is an adaptive second-order optimizer that uses a diagonal block-Kronecker approximation of the Fisher information matrix, achieving better convergence and accuracy in training deep neural networks while maintaining computational efficiency.

Contribution

This paper introduces AdaFisher, a novel second-order optimizer that efficiently approximates the Fisher information matrix for improved training of DNNs.

Findings

AdaFisher outperforms state-of-the-art optimizers in accuracy.

AdaFisher converges faster than traditional methods.

It demonstrates robustness across different tasks.

Abstract

First-order optimization methods are currently the mainstream in training deep neural networks (DNNs). Optimizers like Adam incorporate limited curvature information by employing the diagonal matrix preconditioning of the stochastic gradient during the training. Despite their widespread, second-order optimization algorithms exhibit superior convergence properties compared to their first-order counterparts e.g. Adam and SGD. However, their practicality in training DNNs is still limited due to increased per-iteration computations compared to the first-order methods. We present \emph{AdaFisher}--an adaptive second-order optimizer that leverages a \emph{diagonal block-Kronecker} approximation of the Fisher information matrix for adaptive gradient preconditioning. AdaFisher aims to bridge the gap between enhanced \emph{convergence/generalization} capabilities and computational efficiency in second-order optimization framework for training DNNs. Despite the slow pace of second-order optimizers, we showcase that AdaFisher can be reliably adopted for image classification, language modeling and stands out for its stability and robustness in hyper-parameter tuning. We demonstrate that AdaFisher \textbf{outperforms the SOTA optimizers} in terms of both accuracy and convergence speed. Code is available from https://github.com/AtlasAnalyticsLab/AdaFisher.