Big Batch Sizes Unlock RWKV Training Gains
💡Batch size tweak drops RWKV PPL from 50 to 20 in hours—key for efficient training
⚡ 30-Second TL;DR
What Changed
Small effective batch=8 yields 50 PPL after 50k steps; stuck despite LR tweaks
Why It Matters
Simple tweak dramatically boosts training efficiency for RNN-based LMs like RWKV, potentially saving days of compute for practitioners.
What To Do Next
Increase gradient accumulation to 64+ when training RWKV or similar LMs from scratch.
Key Points
- •Small effective batch=8 yields 50 PPL after 50k steps; stuck despite LR tweaks
- •Gradient accumulation=64 (effective=128) drops PPL to 20 in 2-3 hours
- •Tested on ~192.8M RWKV v6 via custom code on RTX 4050
- •Applies to from-scratch LM training and fine-tuning
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Original source: Reddit r/MachineLearning ↗
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