In their recent study, Maxwell Aifer explores the potential of natural gradient descent (NGD) as a second-order training method for neural networks. Despite the computational challenges typically associated with second-order methods, Aifer introduces a new hybrid digital-analog algorithm that leverages the thermodynamic properties of an analog system to streamline the training process. By incorporating appropriate hardware, the algorithm demonstrates similar computational efficiency to traditional first-order methods while outperforming current state-of-the-art techniques in various classification and language model tasks. This innovative approach challenges the notion of computational limitations in large-scale training and opens up new possibilities for more efficient optimization strategies.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13817