# SparsyFed: Sparse Adaptive Federated Training

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.05153 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.05153/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [GLIGEN: Open-Set Grounded Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07093/) (2023)
- [Structure and Content-Guided Video Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03011/) (2023)
- [VideoCrafter2: Overcoming Data Limitations for High-Quality Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09047/) (2024)
- [MultiDiffusion: Fusing Diffusion Paths for Controlled Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08113/) (2023)
- [Q-Align: Teaching LMMs for Visual Scoring via Discrete Text-Defined Levels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17090/) (2023)
- [DynamiCrafter: Animating Open-domain Images with Video Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.12190/) (2023)
- [VideoComposer: Compositional Video Synthesis with Motion Controllability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02018/) (2023)
- [BLIP-Diffusion: Pre-trained Subject Representation for Controllable Text-to-Image Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14720/) (2023)
- [ViewCrafter: Taming Video Diffusion Models for High-fidelity Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02048/) (2024)
- [SynSin: End-to-end View Synthesis from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.08804/) (2019)
- [DragNUWA: Fine-grained Control in Video Generation by Integrating Text, Image, and Trajectory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08089/) (2023)
- [Text2Room: Extracting Textured 3D Meshes from 2D Text-to-Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11989/) (2023)
- [SinSR: Diffusion-Based Image Super-Resolution in a Single Step](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.14760/) (2023)
- [LucidDreamer: Domain-free Generation of 3D Gaussian Splatting Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13384/) (2023)
- [MVDiffusion: Enabling Holistic Multi-view Image Generation with Correspondence-Aware Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01097/) (2023)
- [WonderJourney: Going from Anywhere to Everywhere](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03884/) (2023)
- [Text2NeRF: Text-Driven 3D Scene Generation with Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11588/) (2023)
- [MOFA-Video: Controllable Image Animation via Generative Motion Field Adaptions in Frozen Image-to-Video Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20222/) (2024)
- [GenWarp: Single Image to Novel Views with Semantic-Preserving Generative Warping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17251/) (2024)
- [SceneDreamer: Unbounded 3D Scene Generation from 2D Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01330/) (2023)
- [RoomDreamer: Text-Driven 3D Indoor Scene Synthesis with Coherent Geometry and Texture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11337/) (2023)

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

- [FedUHD: Unsupervised Federated Learning using In-Memory Hyperdimensional Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12021/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Sparse training is often adopted in cross-device federated learning (FL) environments where constrained devices collaboratively train a machine learning model on private data by exchanging pseudo-gradients across heterogeneous networks. Although sparse training methods can reduce communication overhead and computational burden in FL, they are often not used in practice for the following key reasons: (1) data heterogeneity makes it harder for clients to reach consensus on sparse models compared to dense ones, requiring longer training; (2) methods for obtaining sparse masks lack adaptivity to accommodate very heterogeneous data distributions, crucial in cross-device FL; and (3) additional hyperparameters are required, which are notably challenging to tune in FL. This paper presents SparsyFed, a practical federated sparse training method that critically addresses the problems above. Previous works have only solved one or two of these challenges at the expense of introducing new trade-offs, such as clients' consensus on masks versus sparsity pattern adaptivity. We show that SparsyFed simultaneously (1) can produce 95% sparse models, with negligible degradation in accuracy, while only needing a single hyperparameter, (2) achieves a per-round weight regrowth 200 times smaller than previous methods, and (3) allows the sparse masks to adapt to highly heterogeneous data distributions and outperform all baselines under such conditions.