# DCLP: Neural Architecture Predictor with Curriculum Contrastive Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.13020 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13020/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Feb 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [DARTS: Differentiable Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09055/) (2018)
- [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)
- [ProxylessNAS: Direct Neural Architecture Search on Target Task and Hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00332/) (2018)
- [Self-supervised Visual Feature Learning with Deep Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06162/) (2019)
- [NAS-Bench-201: Extending the Scope of Reproducible Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00326/) (2020)
- [AutoML: A Survey of the State-of-the-Art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.00709/) (2019)
- [NAS-Bench-101: Towards Reproducible Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09635/) (2019)
- [Neural Architecture Search without Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04647/) (2020)
- [Competence-based Curriculum Learning for Neural Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.09848/) (2019)
- [BANANAS: Bayesian Optimization with Neural Architectures for Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.11858/) (2019)
- [Self-supervised Learning on Graphs: Contrastive, Generative,or Predictive](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.07342/) (2021)
- [Genetic CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01513/) (2017)
- [Neural Predictor for Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00848/) (2019)
- [DARTS-: Robustly Stepping out of Performance Collapse Without Indicators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.01027/) (2020)
- [NAS evaluation is frustratingly hard](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.12522/) (2019)
- [Curriculum Learning of Multiple Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.1353/) (2014)
- [β-DARTS: Beta-Decay Regularization for Differentiable Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01665/) (2022)
- [ZiCo: Zero-shot NAS via Inverse Coefficient of Variation on Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11300/) (2023)
- [A Generic Graph-based Neural Architecture Encoding Scheme for Predictor-based NAS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01899/) (2020)
- [ReNAS:Relativistic Evaluation of Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01523/) (2019)
- [Contrastive Neural Architecture Search with Neural Architecture Comparators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05471/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [CARL: Causality-guided Architecture Representation Learning for an Interpretable Performance Predictor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04001/) (2025)
- [Loss Functions for Predictor-based Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05869/) (2025)
- [View-Consistent 3D Scene Editing via Dual-Path Structural Correspondense and Semantic Continuity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17801/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Neural predictors have shown great potential in the evaluation process of neural architecture search (NAS). However, current predictor-based approaches overlook the fact that training a predictor necessitates a considerable number of trained neural networks as the labeled training set, which is costly to obtain. Therefore, the critical issue in utilizing predictors for NAS is to train a high-performance predictor using as few trained neural networks as possible. Although some methods attempt to address this problem through unsupervised learning, they often result in inaccurate predictions. We argue that the unsupervised tasks intended for the common graph data are too challenging for neural networks, causing unsupervised training to be susceptible to performance crashes in NAS. To address this issue, we propose a Curricumum-guided Contrastive Learning framework for neural Predictor (DCLP). Our method simplifies the contrastive task by designing a novel curriculum to enhance the stability of unlabeled training data distribution during contrastive training. Specifically, we propose a scheduler that ranks the training data according to the contrastive difficulty of each data and then inputs them to the contrastive learner in order. This approach concentrates the training data distribution and makes contrastive training more efficient. By using our method, the contrastive learner incrementally learns feature representations via unsupervised data on a smooth learning curve, avoiding performance crashes that may occur with excessively variable training data distributions. We experimentally demonstrate that DCLP has high accuracy and efficiency compared with existing predictors, and shows promising potential to discover superior architectures in various search spaces when combined with search strategies. Our code is available at: https://github.com/Zhengsh123/DCLP.