Fast and Effective Weight Update for Pruned Large Language Models
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Abstract (arXiv)
Pruning large language models (LLMs) is a challenging task due to their enormous size. The primary difficulty is fine-tuning the model after pruning, which is needed to recover the lost performance caused by dropping weights. Recent approaches have either ignored fine-tuning entirely, focusing on efficient pruning criteria, or attempted layer-wise weight updates, preserving the behavior of each layer. However, even layer-wise weight updates can be costly for LLMs, and previous works have resorted to various approximations. In our paper, we propose a fast and effective weight update algorithm for pruned layers based on the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM). We further extend it with a simple gradual pruning mask selection and achieve state-of-the-art pruning performance across a wide range of LLMs. Code is available at https://github.com/fmfi-compbio/admm-pruning.
Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 35 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Jan 2024.
Builds on
35 of 46 references.
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 6; 2026: 2.
11 papers.
- 2024Model Compression and Efficient Inference for Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 64
- 2025ProxSparse: Regularized Learning of Semi-Structured Sparsity Masks for Pretrained LLMscited by 11
- 2024Two Sparse Matrices are Better than One: Sparsifying Neural Networks with Double Sparse Factorizationcited by 6
- 2025MACKO: Sparse Matrix-Vector Multiplication for Low Sparsitycited by 6
- 2025The Unseen Frontier: Pushing the Limits of LLM Sparsity with Surrogate-Free ADMMcited by 5
- 2025Addition is almost all you need: Compressing large language models with double binary factorizationcited by 3
- 2026ADMM-Q: An Improved Hessian-based Weight Quantizer for Post-Training Quantization of Large Language Modelscited by 3
- 2024Dependency-Aware Semi-Structured Sparsity of GLU Variants in Large Language Modelscited by 2
- 2025Model Hemorrhage and the Robustness Limits of Large Language Modelscited by 1
- 2025A Free Lunch in LLM Compression: Revisiting Retraining after Pruningcited by 1
- 2026LEAP: Learnable End-to-End Adaptive Pruning of Large Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026LEAP: Learnable End-to-End Adaptive Pruning of Large Language Models17 May 2026
- 2026ADMM-Q: An Improved Hessian-based Weight Quantizer for Post-Training Quantization of Large Language Models11 May 2026
- 2025MACKO: Sparse Matrix-Vector Multiplication for Low Sparsity17 Nov 2025
- 2025A Free Lunch in LLM Compression: Revisiting Retraining after Pruning16 Oct 2025
- 2025The Unseen Frontier: Pushing the Limits of LLM Sparsity with Surrogate-Free ADMM2 Oct 2025
- 2025Addition is almost all you need: Compressing large language models with double binary factorization16 May 2025
- 2025Model Hemorrhage and the Robustness Limits of Large Language Models31 Mar 2025
- 2025ProxSparse: Regularized Learning of Semi-Structured Sparsity Masks for Pretrained LLMs1 Feb 2025
- 2024Two Sparse Matrices are Better than One: Sparsifying Neural Networks with Double Sparse Factorization27 Sep 2024
- 2024Dependency-Aware Semi-Structured Sparsity of GLU Variants in Large Language Models3 May 2024
- 2024Model Compression and Efficient Inference for Large Language Models: A Survey15 Feb 2024