# CondenseNet: An Efficient DenseNet using Learned Group Convolutions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.09224 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09224/

## Key facts

- Cited by 122 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 25 Nov 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 122)

- [Dynamic Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04906/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of the Deeper Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17887/) (2024)
- [Run, Don't Walk: Chasing Higher FLOPS for Faster Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03667/) (2023)
- [State Entropy Maximization with Random Encoders for Efficient Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09430/) (2021)
- [Weakly Supervised Object Localization and Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07918/) (2021)
- [The Effects of Regularization and Data Augmentation are Class Dependent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03632/) (2022)
- [Dynamic Multimodal Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00102/) (2022)
- [DeepReDuce: ReLU Reduction for Fast Private Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01396/) (2021)
- [Online Continual Learning for Embedded Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10681/) (2022)
- [Glance and Focus Networks for Dynamic Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03014/) (2022)
- [HR-NAS: Searching Efficient High-Resolution Neural Architectures with Lightweight Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06560/) (2021)
- [Lightweight Deep Learning for Resource-Constrained Environments: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07236/) (2024)
- [Towards Compact CNNs via Collaborative Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.11228/) (2021)
- [CondenseNet V2: Sparse Feature Reactivation for Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04382/) (2021)
- [Dynamic Resolution Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02898/) (2021)
- [Topology-Aware Network Pruning using Multi-stage Graph Embedding and Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.03214/) (2021)
- [Masked Contrastive Graph Representation Learning for Age Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17798/) (2023)
- [Latency-aware Unified Dynamic Networks for Efficient Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15949/) (2023)
- [Latency-aware Spatial-wise Dynamic Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06223/) (2022)
- [DAT++: Spatially Dynamic Vision Transformer with Deformable Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01430/) (2023)
- [Differentiable Dynamic Quantization with Mixed Precision and Adaptive Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02295/) (2021)
- [Learning Prototype-oriented Set Representations for Meta-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.09140/) (2021)
- [Knowledge Evolution in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05152/) (2021)
- [Hybrid Pixel-Unshuffled Network for Lightweight Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.08921/) (2022)
- [Emulating Human-like Adaptive Vision for Efficient and Flexible Machine Visual Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15333/) (2025)
- [Towards energy-efficient Deep Learning: An overview of energy-efficient approaches along the Deep Learning Lifecycle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01980/) (2023)
- [Computation-efficient Deep Learning for Computer Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13998/) (2023)
- [RepGhost: A Hardware-Efficient Ghost Module via Re-parameterization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.06088/) (2022)
- [Improving Computational Efficiency in Visual Reinforcement Learning via Stored Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02886/) (2021)
- [SuperTickets: Drawing Task-Agnostic Lottery Tickets from Supernets via Jointly Architecture Searching and Parameter Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.03677/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep neural networks are increasingly used on mobile devices, where computational resources are limited. In this paper we develop CondenseNet, a novel network architecture with unprecedented efficiency. It combines dense connectivity with a novel module called learned group convolution. The dense connectivity facilitates feature re-use in the network, whereas learned group convolutions remove connections between layers for which this feature re-use is superfluous. At test time, our model can be implemented using standard group convolutions, allowing for efficient computation in practice. Our experiments show that CondenseNets are far more efficient than state-of-the-art compact convolutional networks such as MobileNets and ShuffleNets.
