# Lessons from the Clustering Analysis of a Search Space: A Centroid-based Approach to Initializing NAS

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.09126 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.09126/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 18 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Aug 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [DARTS: Differentiable Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09055/) (2018)
- [Regularized Evolution for Image Classifier Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01548/) (2018)
- [NAS-Bench-201: Extending the Scope of Reproducible Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00326/) (2020)
- [NAS-Bench-101: Towards Reproducible Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09635/) (2019)
- [Metaheuristic Design of Feedforward Neural Networks: A Review of Two Decades of Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.05584/) (2017)
- [Bayesian Neural Architecture Search using A Training-Free Performance Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.10726/) (2020)

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

- [Fitness Landscape Footprint: A Framework to Compare Neural Architecture Search Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01584/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Lots of effort in neural architecture search (NAS) research has been dedicated to algorithmic development, aiming at designing more efficient and less costly methods. Nonetheless, the investigation of the initialization of these techniques remain scare, and currently most NAS methodologies rely on stochastic initialization procedures, because acquiring information prior to search is costly. However, the recent availability of NAS benchmarks have enabled low computational resources prototyping. In this study, we propose to accelerate a NAS algorithm using a data-driven initialization technique, leveraging the availability of NAS benchmarks. Particularly, we proposed a two-step methodology. First, a calibrated clustering analysis of the search space is performed. Second, the centroids are extracted and used to initialize a NAS algorithm. We tested our proposal using Aging Evolution, an evolutionary algorithm, on NAS-bench-101. The results show that, compared to a random initialization, a faster convergence and a better performance of the final solution is achieved.