System-Level Test (SLT) has been a part of the test flow for integrated circuits for over a decade and still gains importance. However, no systematic approaches exist for test program generation, especially targeting non-functional properties of the Device under Test (DUT). Currently, test engineers manually compose test suites from off-the-shelf software, approximating the end-user environment of the DUT. This is a challenging and tedious task that does not guarantee sufficient control over non-functional properties. This paper proposes Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate test programs. We take a first glance at how pre-trained LLMs perform in test program generation to optimize non-functional properties of the DUT. Therefore, we write a prompt to generate C code snippets that maximize the instructions per cycle of a super-scalar, out-of-order architecture in simulation. Additionally, we apply prompt and hyperparameter optimization to achieve the best possible results without further training.
Cancer is one of the diseases that kill the most women in the world, with breast cancer being responsible for the highest number of cancer cases and consequently deaths. However, it can be prevented by early detection and, consequently, early treatment. Any development for detection or perdition this kind of cancer is important for a better healthy life. Many studies focus on a model with high accuracy in cancer prediction, but sometimes accuracy alone may not always be a reliable metric. This study implies an investigative approach to studying the performance of different machine learning algorithms based on boosting to predict breast cancer focusing on the recall metric. Boosting machine learning algorithms has been proven to be an effective tool for detecting medical diseases. The dataset of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) repository has been utilized to train and test the model classifier that contains their attributes. The main objective of this study is to use state-of-the-art boosting algorithms such as AdaBoost, XGBoost, CatBoost and LightGBM to predict and diagnose breast cancer and to find the most effective metric regarding recall, ROC-AUC, and confusion matrix. Furthermore, our study is the first to use these four boosting algorithms with Optuna, a library for hyperparameter optimization, and the SHAP method to improve the interpretability of our model, which can be used as a support to identify and predict breast cancer. We were able to improve AUC or recall for all the models and reduce the False Negative for AdaBoost and LigthGBM the final AUC were more than 99.41\% for all models.
Data augmentation is arguably the most important regularization technique commonly used to improve generalization performance of machine learning models. It primarily involves the application of appropriate data transformation operations to create new data samples with desired properties. Despite its effectiveness, the process is often challenging because of the time-consuming trial and error procedures for creating and testing different candidate augmentations and their hyperparameters manually. State-of-the-art approaches are increasingly relying on automated machine learning (AutoML) principles. This work presents a comprehensive survey of AutoML-based data augmentation techniques. We discuss various approaches for accomplishing data augmentation with AutoML, including data manipulation, data integration and data synthesis techniques. The focus of this work is on image data augmentation methods. Nonetheless, we cover other data modalities, especially in cases where the specific data augmentations techniques being discussed are more suitable for these other modalities. For instance, since automated data integration methods are more suitable for tabular data, we cover tabular data in the discussion of data integration methods. The work also presents extensive discussion of techniques for accomplishing each of the major subtasks of the image data augmentation process: search space design, hyperparameter optimization and model evaluation. Finally, we carried out an extensive comparison and analysis of the performance of automated data augmentation techniques and state-of-the-art methods based on classical augmentation approaches. The results show that AutoML methods for data augmentation currently outperform state-of-the-art techniques based on conventional approaches.
Hyperparameter selection in continual learning scenarios is a challenging and underexplored aspect, especially in practical non-stationary environments. Traditional approaches, such as grid searches with held-out validation data from all tasks, are unrealistic for building accurate lifelong learning systems. This paper aims to explore the role of hyperparameter selection in continual learning and the necessity of continually and automatically tuning them according to the complexity of the task at hand. Hence, we propose leveraging the nature of sequence task learning to improve Hyperparameter Optimization efficiency. By using the functional analysis of variance-based techniques, we identify the most crucial hyperparameters that have an impact on performance. We demonstrate empirically that this approach, agnostic to continual scenarios and strategies, allows us to speed up hyperparameters optimization continually across tasks and exhibit robustness even in the face of varying sequential task orders. We believe that our findings can contribute to the advancement of continual learning methodologies towards more efficient, robust and adaptable models for real-world applications.
Feature augmentation from one-to-many relationship tables is a critical but challenging problem in ML model development. To augment good features, data scientists need to come up with SQL queries manually, which is time-consuming. Featuretools [1] is a widely used tool by the data science community to automatically augment the training data by extracting new features from relevant tables. It represents each feature as a group-by aggregation SQL query on relevant tables and can automatically generate these SQL queries. However, it does not include predicates in these queries, which significantly limits its application in many real-world scenarios. To overcome this limitation, we propose FEATAUG, a new feature augmentation framework that automatically extracts predicate-aware SQL queries from one-to-many relationship tables. This extension is not trivial because considering predicates will exponentially increase the number of candidate queries. As a result, the original Featuretools framework, which materializes all candidate queries, will not work and needs to be redesigned. We formally define the problem and model it as a hyperparameter optimization problem. We discuss how the Bayesian Optimization can be applied here and propose a novel warm-up strategy to optimize it. To make our algorithm more practical, we also study how to identify promising attribute combinations for predicates. We show that how the beam search idea can partially solve the problem and propose several techniques to further optimize it. Our experiments on four real-world datasets demonstrate that FeatAug extracts more effective features compared to Featuretools and other baselines. The code is open-sourced at https://github.com/sfu-db/FeatAug
Though numerous solvers have been proposed for the MaxSAT problem, and the benchmark environment such as MaxSAT Evaluations provides a platform for the comparison of the state-of-the-art solvers, existing assessments were usually evaluated based on the quality, e.g., fitness, of the best-found solutions obtained within a given running time budget. However, concerning solely the final obtained solutions regarding specific time budgets may restrict us from comprehending the behavior of the solvers along the convergence process. This paper demonstrates that Empirical Cumulative Distribution Functions can be used to compare MaxSAT local search solvers' anytime performance across multiple problem instances and various time budgets. The assessment reveals distinctions in solvers' performance and displays that the (dis)advantages of solvers adjust along different running times. This work also exhibits that the quantitative and high variance assessment of anytime performance can guide machines, i.e., automatic configurators, to search for better parameter settings. Our experimental results show that the hyperparameter optimization tool, i.e., SMAC, generally achieves better parameter settings of local search when using the anytime performance as the cost function, compared to using the fitness of the best-found solutions.
Effectively representing heterogeneous tabular datasets for meta-learning purposes remains an open problem. Previous approaches rely on predefined meta-features, for example, statistical measures or landmarkers. The emergence of dataset encoders opens new possibilities for the extraction of meta-features because they do not involve any handmade design. Moreover, they are proven to generate dataset representations with desired spatial properties. In this research, we evaluate an encoder-based approach to one of the most established meta-tasks - warm-starting of the Bayesian Hyperparameter Optimization. To broaden our analysis we introduce a new approach for representation learning on tabular data based on [Tomoharu Iwata and Atsutoshi Kumagai. Meta-learning from Tasks with Heterogeneous Attribute Spaces. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 2020]. The validation on over 100 datasets from UCI and an independent metaMIMIC set of datasets highlights the nuanced challenges in representation learning. We show that general representations may not suffice for some meta-tasks where requirements are not explicitly considered during extraction.
Time series forecasting attempts to predict future events by analyzing past trends and patterns. Although well researched, certain critical aspects pertaining to the use of deep learning in time series forecasting remain ambiguous. Our research primarily focuses on examining the impact of specific hyperparameters related to time series, such as context length and validation strategy, on the performance of the state-of-the-art MLP model in time series forecasting. We have conducted a comprehensive series of experiments involving 4800 configurations per dataset across 20 time series forecasting datasets, and our findings demonstrate the importance of tuning these parameters. Furthermore, in this work, we introduce the largest metadataset for timeseries forecasting to date, named TSBench, comprising 97200 evaluations, which is a twentyfold increase compared to previous works in the field. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of the created metadataset on multi-fidelity hyperparameter optimization tasks.
Due to the recent increase in interest in Financial Technology (FinTech), applications like credit default prediction (CDP) are gaining significant industrial and academic attention. In this regard, CDP plays a crucial role in assessing the creditworthiness of individuals and businesses, enabling lenders to make informed decisions regarding loan approvals and risk management. In this paper, we propose a workflow-based approach to improve CDP, which refers to the task of assessing the probability that a borrower will default on his or her credit obligations. The workflow consists of multiple steps, each designed to leverage the strengths of different techniques featured in machine learning pipelines and, thus best solve the CDP task. We employ a comprehensive and systematic approach starting with data preprocessing using Weight of Evidence encoding, a technique that ensures in a single-shot data scaling by removing outliers, handling missing values, and making data uniform for models working with different data types. Next, we train several families of learning models, introducing ensemble techniques to build more robust models and hyperparameter optimization via multi-objective genetic algorithms to consider both predictive accuracy and financial aspects. Our research aims at contributing to the FinTech industry in providing a tool to move toward more accurate and reliable credit risk assessment, benefiting both lenders and borrowers.
Recovering dynamical equations from observed noisy data is the central challenge of system identification. We develop a statistical mechanics approach to analyze sparse equation discovery algorithms, which typically balance data fit and parsimony via hyperparameter tuning. In this framework, statistical mechanics offers tools to analyze the interplay between complexity and fitness similarly to that of entropy and energy in physical systems. To establish this analogy, we define the hyperparameter optimization procedure as a two-level Bayesian inference problem that separates variable selection from coefficient inference and enables the computation of the posterior parameter distribution in closed form. Our approach provides uncertainty quantification, crucial in the low-data limit that is frequently encountered in real-world applications. A key advantage of employing statistical mechanical concepts, such as free energy and the partition function, is to connect the large data limit to thermodynamic limit and characterize the sparsity- and noise-induced phase transitions that delineate correct from incorrect identification. We thus provide a method for closed-loop inference, estimating the noise in a given model and checking if the model is tolerant to that noise amount. This perspective of sparse equation discovery is versatile and can be adapted to various other equation discovery algorithms.
The Transformer model is the state-of-the-art in Machine Translation. However, in general, neural translation models often under perform on language pairs with insufficient training data. As a consequence, relatively few experiments have been carried out using this architecture on low-resource language pairs. In this study, hyperparameter optimization of Transformer models in translating the low-resource English-Irish language pair is evaluated. We demonstrate that choosing appropriate parameters leads to considerable performance improvements. Most importantly, the correct choice of subword model is shown to be the biggest driver of translation performance. SentencePiece models using both unigram and BPE approaches were appraised. Variations on model architectures included modifying the number of layers, testing various regularisation techniques and evaluating the optimal number of heads for attention. A generic 55k DGT corpus and an in-domain 88k public admin corpus were used for evaluation. A Transformer optimized model demonstrated a BLEU score improvement of 7.8 points when compared with a baseline RNN model. Improvements were observed across a range of metrics, including TER, indicating a substantially reduced post editing effort for Transformer optimized models with 16k BPE subword models. Bench-marked against Google Translate, our translation engines demonstrated significant improvements. The question of whether or not Transformers can be used effectively in a low-resource setting of English-Irish translation has been addressed. Is f\'eidir linn - yes we can.
Spiking Neural Networks (SNN). SNNs are based on a more biologically inspired approach than usual artificial neural networks. Such models are characterized by complex dynamics between neurons and spikes. These are very sensitive to the hyperparameters, making their optimization challenging. To tackle hyperparameter optimization of SNNs, we initially extended the signal loss issue of SNNs to what we call silent networks. These networks fail to emit enough spikes at their outputs due to mistuned hyperparameters or architecture. Generally, search spaces are heavily restrained, sometimes even discretized, to prevent the sampling of such networks. By defining an early stopping criterion detecting silent networks and by designing specific constraints, we were able to instantiate larger and more flexible search spaces. We applied a constrained Bayesian optimization technique, which was asynchronously parallelized, as the evaluation time of a SNN is highly stochastic. Large-scale experiments were carried-out on a multi-GPU Petascale architecture. By leveraging silent networks, results show an acceleration of the search, while maintaining good performances of both the optimization algorithm and the best solution obtained. We were able to apply our methodology to two popular training algorithms, known as spike timing dependent plasticity and surrogate gradient. Early detection allowed us to prevent worthless and costly computation, directing the search toward promising hyperparameter combinations. Our methodology could be applied to multi-objective problems, where the spiking activity is often minimized to reduce the energy consumption. In this scenario, it becomes essential to find the delicate frontier between low-spiking and silent networks. Finally, our approach may have implications for neural architecture search, particularly in defining suitable spiking architectures.
Exploratory landscape analysis and fitness landscape analysis in general have been pivotal in facilitating problem understanding, algorithm design and endeavors such as automated algorithm selection and configuration. These techniques have largely been limited to search spaces of a single domain. In this work, we provide the means to compute exploratory landscape features for mixed-variable problems where the decision space is a mixture of continuous, binary, integer, and categorical variables. This is achieved by utilizing existing encoding techniques originating from machine learning. We provide a comprehensive juxtaposition of the results based on these different techniques. To further highlight their merit for practical applications, we design and conduct an automated algorithm selection study based on a hyperparameter optimization benchmark suite. We derive a meaningful compartmentalization of these benchmark problems by clustering based on the used landscape features. The identified clusters mimic the behavior the used algorithms exhibit. Meaning, the different clusters have different best performing algorithms. Finally, our trained algorithm selector is able to close the gap between the single best and the virtual best solver by 57.5% over all benchmark problems.
Automated machine learning (AutoML) is a collection of techniques designed to automate the machine learning development process. While traditional AutoML approaches have been successfully applied in several critical steps of model development (e.g. hyperparameter optimization), there lacks a AutoML system that automates the entire end-to-end model production workflow for computer vision. To fill this blank, we propose a novel request-to-model task, which involves understanding the user's natural language request and execute the entire workflow to output production-ready models. This empowers non-expert individuals to easily build task-specific models via a user-friendly language interface. To facilitate development and evaluation, we develop a new experimental platform called AutoMMLab and a new benchmark called LAMP for studying key components in the end-to-end request-to-model pipeline. Hyperparameter optimization (HPO) is one of the most important components for AutoML. Traditional approaches mostly rely on trial-and-error, leading to inefficient parameter search. To solve this problem, we propose a novel LLM-based HPO algorithm, called HPO-LLaMA. Equipped with extensive knowledge and experience in model hyperparameter tuning, HPO-LLaMA achieves significant improvement of HPO efficiency. Dataset and code are available at https://github.com/yang-ze-kang/AutoMMLab.
Given a Hyperparameter Optimization(HPO) problem, how to design an algorithm to find optimal configurations efficiently? Bayesian Optimization(BO) and the multi-fidelity BO methods employ surrogate models to sample configurations based on history evaluations. More recent studies obtain better performance by integrating BO with HyperBand(HB), which accelerates evaluation by early stopping mechanism. However, these methods ignore the advantage of a suitable evaluation scheme over the default HyperBand, and the capability of BO is still constrained by skewed evaluation results. In this paper, we propose FlexHB, a new method pushing multi-fidelity BO to the limit as well as re-designing a framework for early stopping with Successive Halving(SH). Comprehensive study on FlexHB shows that (1) our fine-grained fidelity method considerably enhances the efficiency of searching optimal configurations, (2) our FlexBand framework (self-adaptive allocation of SH brackets, and global ranking of configurations in both current and past SH procedures) grants the algorithm with more flexibility and improves the anytime performance. Our method achieves superior efficiency and outperforms other methods on various HPO tasks. Empirical results demonstrate that FlexHB can achieve up to 6.9X and 11.1X speedups over the state-of-the-art MFES-HB and BOHB respectively.
Link prediction is a crucial task in graph machine learning, where the goal is to infer missing or future links within a graph. Traditional approaches leverage heuristic methods based on widely observed connectivity patterns, offering broad applicability and generalizability without the need for model training. Despite their utility, these methods are limited by their reliance on human-derived heuristics and lack the adaptability of data-driven approaches. Conversely, parametric link predictors excel in automatically learning the connectivity patterns from data and achieving state-of-the-art but fail short to directly transfer across different graphs. Instead, it requires the cost of extensive training and hyperparameter optimization to adapt to the target graph. In this work, we introduce the Universal Link Predictor (UniLP), a novel model that combines the generalizability of heuristic approaches with the pattern learning capabilities of parametric models. UniLP is designed to autonomously identify connectivity patterns across diverse graphs, ready for immediate application to any unseen graph dataset without targeted training. We address the challenge of conflicting connectivity patterns-arising from the unique distributions of different graphs-through the implementation of In-context Learning (ICL). This approach allows UniLP to dynamically adjust to various target graphs based on contextual demonstrations, thereby avoiding negative transfer. Through rigorous experimentation, we demonstrate UniLP's effectiveness in adapting to new, unseen graphs at test time, showcasing its ability to perform comparably or even outperform parametric models that have been finetuned for specific datasets. Our findings highlight UniLP's potential to set a new standard in link prediction, combining the strengths of heuristic and parametric methods in a single, versatile framework.
Choosing appropriate hyperparameters plays a crucial role in the success of neural networks as hyper-parameters directly control the behavior and performance of the training algorithms. To obtain efficient tuning, Bayesian optimization methods based on Gaussian process (GP) models are widely used. Despite numerous applications of Bayesian optimization in deep learning, the existing methodologies are developed based on a convenient but restrictive assumption that the tuning parameters are independent of each other. However, tuning parameters with conditional dependence are common in practice. In this paper, we focus on two types of them: branching and nested parameters. Nested parameters refer to those tuning parameters that exist only within a particular setting of another tuning parameter, and a parameter within which other parameters are nested is called a branching parameter. To capture the conditional dependence between branching and nested parameters, a unified Bayesian optimization framework is proposed. The sufficient conditions are rigorously derived to guarantee the validity of the kernel function, and the asymptotic convergence of the proposed optimization framework is proven under the continuum-armed-bandit setting. Based on the new GP model, which accounts for the dependent structure among input variables through a new kernel function, higher prediction accuracy and better optimization efficiency are observed in a series of synthetic simulations and real data applications of neural networks. Sensitivity analysis is also performed to provide insights into how changes in hyperparameter values affect prediction accuracy.
Gradient-based hyperparameter optimization methods update hyperparameters using hypergradients, gradients of a meta criterion with respect to hyperparameters. Previous research used two distinct update strategies: optimizing hyperparameters using global hypergradients obtained after completing model training or local hypergradients derived after every few model updates. While global hypergradients offer reliability, their computational cost is significant; conversely, local hypergradients provide speed but are often suboptimal. In this paper, we propose *glocal* hypergradient estimation, blending "global" quality with "local" efficiency. To this end, we use the Koopman operator theory to linearize the dynamics of hypergradients so that the global hypergradients can be efficiently approximated only by using a trajectory of local hypergradients. Consequently, we can optimize hyperparameters greedily using estimated global hypergradients, achieving both reliability and efficiency simultaneously. Through numerical experiments of hyperparameter optimization, including optimization of optimizers, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the glocal hypergradient estimation.
Speeding up the large-scale distributed training is challenging in that it requires improving various components of training including load balancing, communication, optimizers, etc. We present novel approaches for fast large-scale training of BERT model which individually ameliorates each component thereby leading to a new level of BERT training performance. Load balancing is imperative in distributed BERT training since its training datasets are characterized by samples with various lengths. Communication cost, which is proportional to the scale of distributed training, needs to be hidden by useful computation. In addition, the optimizers, e.g., ADAM, LAMB, etc., need to be carefully re-evaluated in the context of large-scale distributed training. We propose two new ideas, (1) local presorting based on dataset stratification for load balancing and (2) bucket-wise gradient clipping before allreduce which allows us to benefit from the overlap of gradient computation and synchronization as well as the fast training of gradient clipping before allreduce. We also re-evaluate existing optimizers via hyperparameter optimization and utilize ADAM, which also contributes to fast training via larger batches than existing methods. Our proposed methods, all combined, give the fastest MLPerf BERT training of 25.1 (22.3) seconds on 1,024 NVIDIA A100 GPUs, which is 1.33x (1.13x) and 1.57x faster than the other top two (one) submissions to MLPerf v1.1 (v2.0). Our implementation and evaluation results are available at MLPerf v1.1~v2.1.
Hyperparameter optimization is critical in modern machine learning, requiring expert knowledge, numerous trials, and high computational and human resources. Despite the advancements in Automated Machine Learning (AutoML), challenges in terms of trial efficiency, setup complexity, and interoperability still persist. To address these issues, we introduce a novel paradigm leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to automate hyperparameter optimization across diverse machine learning tasks, which is named AgentHPO (short for LLM Agent-based Hyperparameter Optimization). Specifically, AgentHPO processes the task information autonomously, conducts experiments with specific hyperparameters (HPs), and iteratively optimizes them based on historical trials. This human-like optimization process largely reduces the number of required trials, simplifies the setup process, and enhances interpretability and user trust, compared to traditional AutoML methods. Extensive empirical experiments conducted on 12 representative machine-learning tasks indicate that AgentHPO not only matches but also often surpasses the best human trials in terms of performance while simultaneously providing explainable results. Further analysis sheds light on the strategies employed by the LLM in optimizing these tasks, highlighting its effectiveness and adaptability in various scenarios.