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New research explores Muon optimization's theoretical and practical limits

Two new research papers explore the intricacies of the 'Muon' optimization method, a technique used in training deep learning models. The first paper proposes using Hilbert distance to better manage the output distributions of softmax functions, unifying existing methods under a new mathematical framework. The second paper investigates how practical approximations in Muon's implementation, specifically the Newton-Schulz iterations and stabilization constants, cause it to deviate from its theoretical spectral max-margin behavior towards a Frobenius max-margin direction. It also suggests that increasing Newton-Schulz iterations logarithmically can help Muon regain its spectral bias. AI

IMPACT These papers delve into the theoretical underpinnings and practical implementations of optimization algorithms, potentially leading to more efficient and stable deep learning model training.

RANK_REASON Two academic papers published on arXiv discussing optimization methods in machine learning.

Read on arXiv cs.LG →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 2 sources. How we write summaries →

New research explores Muon optimization's theoretical and practical limits

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COVERAGE [2]

  1. arXiv cs.AI TIER_1 English(EN) · Aditya Somasundaram, Charles Guille-Escuret, Alexander Moreno, Zhengzhong Liu, Eric Xing ·

    Taming Softmax at the Limits of Muon: A Unified Approach through Hilbert Geometry

    arXiv:2610.17588v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Muon controls weight updates through the RMS movement of a linear layer's output. This implicitly treats the linear output as a proxy for the full module, including the nonlinearity that follows. This proxy can be misleading for s…

  2. arXiv cs.LG TIER_1 English(EN) · Yongtao Wu, Mahdi Mansouri, Zhenyu Zhu ·

    From Spectral to Frobenius: When Muon Loses Its Spectral Implicit Bias

    arXiv:2610.20112v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Prior work on implicit bias shows that gradient descent selects the Frobenius max-margin direction on linearly separable problems, whereas Fan et al. (2025) established spectral max-margin behavior for spectral-norm steepest descent…