aiqbench analysis
This research introduces ASCEND, an adaptive compression algorithm designed specifically for federated knowledge distillation across heterogeneous model architectures at the network edge. By framing strategy selection as a multi-armed bandit problem that balances optimization gains with communication costs, the method dynamically adjusts to diverse client resources without sacrificing accuracy. The work addresses critical scalability bottlenecks in distributed machine learning by optimizing gradient transmission efficiency under strict privacy constraints.
Adaptive Heterogeneous Compression for Resource-Efficient Federated Knowledge Distillation
arXiv:2608.15660v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Federated learning (FL) enables privacy-preserving distributed model training but faces challenges from heterogeneous model architectures and limited communication resources at the network edge. Federated knowledge distillation (FedKD) alleviates model heterogeneity by combining prototype-wise parameter aggregation and knowledge transfer across heterogeneous models. However, transmitting gradients still introduces considerable communication overhead, while existing compression approaches typically apply a uniform strategy across clients and ignore their diverse model characteristics and resource capacities. To address this issue, we propose a heterogeneous compression framework for FedKD that enables each client to select a compression strategy from a candidate strategy set. We formulate the compression strategy selection problem as a non-stationary stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB), where each arm corresponds to a compression strategy. An efficiency-aware reward is designed by jointly considering local optimization improvement, global knowledge alignment, and execution time. Based on this formulation, we develop an Adaptive heterogeneouS Compression algorithm for fEderated kNowledge Distillation (ASCEND), which employs an exponential moving average (EMA)-enhanced $\epsilon$-greedy policy to balance exploration and exploitation. Experimental results on multiple datasets demonstrate that ASCEND effectively adapts to heterogeneous model and resource settings, reducing communication overhead and training time while maintaining competitive model accuracy.
Abstract:Federated learning (FL) enables privacy-preserving distributed model training but faces challenges from heterogeneous model architectures and limited communication resources at the network edge. Federated knowledge distillation (FedKD) alleviates model heterogeneity by combining prototype-wise parameter aggregation and knowledge transfer across heterogeneous models. However, transmitting gradients still introduces considerable communication overhead, while existing compression approaches typically apply a uniform strategy across clients and ignore their diverse model characteristics and resource capacities. To address this issue, we propose a heterogeneous compression framework for FedKD that enables each client to select a compression strategy from a candidate strategy set. We formulate the compression strategy selection problem as a non-stationary stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB), where each arm corresponds to a compression strategy. An efficiency-aware reward is designed by jointly considering local optimization improvement, global knowledge alignment, and execution time. Based on this formulation, we develop an Adaptive heterogeneouS Compression algorithm for fEderated kNowledge Distillation (ASCEND), which employs an exponential moving average (EMA)-enhanced $\epsilon$-greedy policy to balance exploration and exploitation. Experimental results on multiple datasets demonstrate that ASCEND effectively adapts to heterogeneous model and resource settings, reducing communication overhead and training time while maintaining competitive model accuracy.
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing (cs.DC); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
arXiv:2608.15660 [cs.DC]
(or arXiv:2608.15660v1 [cs.DC] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.15660 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 291 words
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