论文标题
有效的视觉变压器培训:以数据为中心的观点
Effective Vision Transformer Training: A Data-Centric Perspective
论文作者
论文摘要
与卷积神经网络(CNN)相比,视觉变压器(VIT)表现出了有希望的性能,但是VIT的训练比CNN难得多。在本文中,我们定义了几个指标,包括动态数据比例(DDP)和知识同化率(KAR),以研究训练过程,并相应地将其分为三个时期:形成,成长和探索。特别是,在训练的最后阶段,我们观察到只有很小的训练示例用于优化模型。鉴于VIT的渴望数据的性质,我们提出了一个简单但重要的问题:在培训的每个阶段,是否有可能提供丰富的``有效''训练示例吗?为了解决这个问题,我们需要解决两个关键问题,即\ ie,如何衡量单个培训示例的``有效性'',以及如何系统地生成足够数量的``有效''示例。为了回答第一个问题,我们发现训练样本的``困难''可以作为衡量培训样本的``有效性''的指标。为了解决第二个问题,我们建议在这些演化阶段动态调整训练数据的``难度''分布。为了实现这两个目的,我们提出了一个新颖的以数据为中心的VIT培训框架,以动态测量训练样本的``困难'',并为不同培训阶段的模型生成``有效的''样品。此外,为了进一步扩大``有效''样品的数量,并减轻了VIT的晚期训练阶段的过度拟合问题,我们提出了一种称为Patcherasing的补丁级擦除策略。广泛的实验证明了提出的以数据为中心的VIT培训框架和技术的有效性。
Vision Transformers (ViTs) have shown promising performance compared with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), but the training of ViTs is much harder than CNNs. In this paper, we define several metrics, including Dynamic Data Proportion (DDP) and Knowledge Assimilation Rate (KAR), to investigate the training process, and divide it into three periods accordingly: formation, growth and exploration. In particular, at the last stage of training, we observe that only a tiny portion of training examples is used to optimize the model. Given the data-hungry nature of ViTs, we thus ask a simple but important question: is it possible to provide abundant ``effective'' training examples at EVERY stage of training? To address this issue, we need to address two critical questions, \ie, how to measure the ``effectiveness'' of individual training examples, and how to systematically generate enough number of ``effective'' examples when they are running out. To answer the first question, we find that the ``difficulty'' of training samples can be adopted as an indicator to measure the ``effectiveness'' of training samples. To cope with the second question, we propose to dynamically adjust the ``difficulty'' distribution of the training data in these evolution stages. To achieve these two purposes, we propose a novel data-centric ViT training framework to dynamically measure the ``difficulty'' of training samples and generate ``effective'' samples for models at different training stages. Furthermore, to further enlarge the number of ``effective'' samples and alleviate the overfitting problem in the late training stage of ViTs, we propose a patch-level erasing strategy dubbed PatchErasing. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed data-centric ViT training framework and techniques.