Large-Scale Learning with Less RAM via Randomization

Daniel Golovin; D. Sculley; H. Brendan McMahan; Michael Young

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arXiv · 1303.4664

Large-Scale Learning with Less RAM via Randomization

Daniel Golovin·D. Sculley·H. Brendan McMahan·Michael Young

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Abstract

We reduce the memory footprint of popular large-scale online learning methods by projecting our weight vector onto a coarse discrete set using randomized rounding. Compared to standard 32-bit float encodings, this reduces RAM usage by more than 50% during training and by up to 95% when making predictions from a fixed model, with almost no loss in accuracy. We also show that randomized counting can be used to implement per-coordinate learning rates, improving model quality with little additional RAM. We prove these memory-saving methods achieve regret guarantees similar to their exact variants. Empirical evaluation confirms excellent performance, dominating standard approaches across memory versus accuracy tradeoffs.

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Daniel Golovin, D. Sculley, H. Brendan McMahan, Michael Young. 2013-03-19. Large-Scale Learning with Less RAM via Randomization. https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.4664

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