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arXiv · 2505.02604

Connecting Independently Trained Modes via Layer-Wise Connectivity

Yongding Tian·Zaid Al-Ars·Maksim Kitsak·Peter Hofstee
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Abstract

Empirical studies have shown that continuous low-loss paths can be constructed between independently trained neural network models. This phenomenon, known as mode connectivity, refers to the existence of such paths between distinct modes-i.e., well-trained solutions in parameter space. However, existing empirical methods do not reliably connect independently trained modes and have been evaluated mainly on a narrow set of architectures (e.g., basic CNNs, VGG, and ResNet), leaving their effectiveness on newer models unclear. In this work, we propose a new empirical algorithm for connecting independently trained modes that generalizes beyond traditional architectures and supports a broader range of networks, including MobileNet, ShuffleNet, EfficientNet, RegNet, Deep Layer Aggregation (DLA), and Compact Convolutional Transformers (CCT). In addition to broader applicability, the proposed method yields more consistent connectivity paths across independently trained mode pairs and supports connecting modes obtained with different training hyperparameters.

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Yongding Tian, Zaid Al-Ars, Maksim Kitsak, Peter Hofstee. 2026-05-28. Connecting Independently Trained Modes via Layer-Wise Connectivity. https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.02604

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