# Dynamic SBI: Round-free Sequential Simulation-Based Inference with Adaptive Datasets

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13997 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13997/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Megatron-LM: Training Multi-Billion Parameter Language Models Using Model Parallelism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08053/) (2019)
- [ZeRO: Memory Optimizations Toward Training Trillion Parameter Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.02054/) (2019)
- [IMPALA: Scalable Distributed Deep-RL with Importance Weighted Actor-Learner Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01561/) (2018)
- [Ray: A Distributed Framework for Emerging AI Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05889/) (2017)
- [Horovod: fast and easy distributed deep learning in TensorFlow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05799/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Learning Where to Simulate: Generative Active Sampling for Online PDE Surrogate Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09949/) (2026)
- [Preconditioned Robust Neural Posterior Estimation for Misspecified Simulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18004/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Simulation-based inference (SBI) is emerging as a new statistical paradigm for addressing complex scientific inference problems. By leveraging the representational power of deep neural networks, SBI can extract the most informative simulation features for the parameters of interest. Sequential SBI methods extend this approach by iteratively steering the simulation process towards the most relevant regions of parameter space. This is typically implemented through an algorithmic structure, in which simulation and network training alternate over multiple rounds. This strategy is particularly well suited for high-precision inference in high-dimensional settings, which are commonplace in physics applications with growing data volumes and increasing model fidelity. Here, we introduce dynamic SBI, which implements the core ideas of sequential methods in a round-free, asynchronous, and highly parallelisable manner. At its core is an adaptive dataset that is iteratively transformed during inference to resemble the target observation. Simulation and training proceed in parallel: trained networks are used both to filter out simulations incompatible with the data and to propose new, more promising ones. Compared to round-based sequential methods, this asynchronous structure can significantly reduce simulation costs and training overhead. We demonstrate that dynamic SBI achieves significant improvements in simulation and training efficiency while maintaining inference performance. We further validate our framework on two challenging astrophysical inference tasks: characterising the stochastic gravitational wave background and analysing strong gravitational lensing systems. Overall, this work presents a flexible and efficient new paradigm for sequential SBI.
