# Efficient Model Performance Estimation via Feature Histories

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.04450 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04450/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 31 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [Aggregated Residual Transformations for Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05431/) (2016)
- [RandAugment: Practical automated data augmentation with a reduced search space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13719/) (2019)
- [DARTS: Differentiable Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09055/) (2018)
- [Improved Regularization of Convolutional Neural Networks with Cutout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.04552/) (2017)
- [Neural Architecture Search with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01578/) (2016)
- [Learning Transferable Architectures for Scalable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.07012/) (2017)
- [MnasNet: Platform-Aware Neural Architecture Search for Mobile](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.11626/) (2018)
- [Regularized Evolution for Image Classifier Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01548/) (2018)
- [Efficient Neural Architecture Search via Parameter Sharing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03268/) (2018)
- [AutoAugment: Learning Augmentation Policies from Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09501/) (2018)
- [Hyperband: A Novel Bandit-Based Approach to Hyperparameter Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.06560/) (2016)
- [Loss Surfaces, Mode Connectivity, and Fast Ensembling of DNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.10026/) (2018)
- [BOHB: Robust and Efficient Hyperparameter Optimization at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.01774/) (2018)
- [Snapshot Ensembles: Train 1, get M for free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00109/) (2017)
- [Large-Scale Evolution of Image Classifiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01041/) (2017)
- [NAS-Bench-101: Towards Reproducible Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09635/) (2019)
- [Scalable Bayesian Optimization Using Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.05700/) (2015)
- [Net2Net: Accelerating Learning via Knowledge Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.05641/) (2015)
- [Progressive Differentiable Architecture Search: Bridging the Depth Gap between Search and Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12760/) (2019)
- [Genetic CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01513/) (2017)
- [Tabular Benchmarks for Joint Architecture and Hyperparameter Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04970/) (2019)
- [Budgeted Training: Rethinking Deep Neural Network Training Under Resource Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04753/) (2019)
- [Horizontal and Vertical Ensemble with Deep Representation for Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1306.2759/) (2013)
- [UNAS: Differentiable Architecture Search Meets Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07651/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [FEAR: A Simple Lightweight Method to Rank Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.04010/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

An important step in the task of neural network design, such as hyper-parameter optimization (HPO) or neural architecture search (NAS), is the evaluation of a candidate model's performance. Given fixed computational resources, one can either invest more time training each model to obtain more accurate estimates of final performance, or spend more time exploring a greater variety of models in the configuration space. In this work, we aim to optimize this exploration-exploitation trade-off in the context of HPO and NAS for image classification by accurately approximating a model's maximal performance early in the training process. In contrast to recent accelerated NAS methods customized for certain search spaces, e.g., requiring the search space to be differentiable, our method is flexible and imposes almost no constraints on the search space. Our method uses the evolution history of features of a network during the early stages of training to build a proxy classifier that matches the peak performance of the network under consideration. We show that our method can be combined with multiple search algorithms to find better solutions to a wide range of tasks in HPO and NAS. Using a sampling-based search algorithm and parallel computing, our method can find an architecture which is better than DARTS and with an 80% reduction in wall-clock search time.