# FedAST: Federated Asynchronous Simultaneous Training

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.00302 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00302/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 28 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Fashion-MNIST: a Novel Image Dataset for Benchmarking Machine Learning Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.07747/) (2017)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Tackling the Objective Inconsistency Problem in Heterogeneous Federated Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07481/) (2020)
- [Towards Federated Learning at Scale: System Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.01046/) (2019)
- [LEAF: A Benchmark for Federated Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01097/) (2018)
- [Ditto: Fair and Robust Federated Learning Through Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04221/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning Based on Dynamic Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.04263/) (2021)
- [Towards Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00710/) (2021)
- [Bayesian Nonparametric Federated Learning of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12022/) (2019)
- [Client Selection for Federated Learning with Heterogeneous Resources in Mobile Edge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08333/) (2018)
- [Three Approaches for Personalization with Applications to Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10619/) (2020)
- [Asynchronous Federated Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03934/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning with Buffered Asynchronous Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06639/) (2021)
- [Asynchronous Federated Learning on Heterogeneous Devices: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.04269/) (2021)
- [Joint Device Scheduling and Resource Allocation for Latency Constrained Wireless Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07174/) (2020)
- [Sharper Convergence Guarantees for Asynchronous SGD for Distributed and Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08307/) (2022)
- [Speeding Up Distributed Machine Learning Using Codes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02673/) (2015)
- [Slow and Stale Gradients Can Win the Race: Error-Runtime Trade-offs in Distributed SGD](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.01113/) (2018)
- [Perturbed Iterate Analysis for Asynchronous Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.06970/) (2015)
- [Tackling System and Statistical Heterogeneity for Federated Learning with Adaptive Client Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11256/) (2021)
- [FedVARP: Tackling the Variance Due to Partial Client Participation in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.14130/) (2022)
- [Robust Federated Learning with Noisy Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00251/) (2019)
- [Efficient Device Scheduling with Multi-Job Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05928/) (2021)
- [On the Convergence of Decentralized Federated Learning Under Imperfect Information Sharing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10695/) (2023)
- [Async-HFL: Efficient and Robust Asynchronous Federated Learning in Hierarchical IoT Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06646/) (2023)
- [Multi-Model Federated Learning with Provable Guarantees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.04330/) (2022)
- [Multi-Model Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.02582/) (2022)

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

- [Federated Communication-Efficient Multi-Objective Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16398/) (2024)
- [Reviving Stale Updates: Data-Free Knowledge Distillation for Asynchronous Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00655/) (2025)
- [FedACT: Concurrent Federated Intelligence across Heterogeneous Data Sources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00011/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated Learning (FL) enables edge devices or clients to collaboratively train machine learning (ML) models without sharing their private data. Much of the existing work in FL focuses on efficiently learning a model for a single task. In this paper, we study simultaneous training of multiple FL models using a common set of clients. The few existing simultaneous training methods employ synchronous aggregation of client updates, which can cause significant delays because large models and/or slow clients can bottleneck the aggregation. On the other hand, a naive asynchronous aggregation is adversely affected by stale client updates. We propose FedAST, a buffered asynchronous federated simultaneous training algorithm that overcomes bottlenecks from slow models and adaptively allocates client resources across heterogeneous tasks. We provide theoretical convergence guarantees for FedAST for smooth non-convex objective functions. Extensive experiments over multiple real-world datasets demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms existing simultaneous FL approaches, achieving up to 46.0% reduction in time to train multiple tasks to completion.