# SLNet: A Super-Lightweight Geometry-Adaptive Network for 3D Point Cloud Recognition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07454 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07454/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Mar 2026.

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

- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07829/) (2018)
- [Point Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00931/) (2020)
- [KPConv: Flexible and Deformable Convolution for Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08889/) (2019)
- [PointCNN: Convolution On X-Transformed Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07791/) (2018)
- [PCT: Point cloud transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09688/) (2020)
- [PointConv: Deep Convolutional Networks on 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.07246/) (2018)
- [Point-BERT: Pre-training 3D Point Cloud Transformers with Masked Point Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14819/) (2021)
- [Point Transformer V3: Simpler, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10035/) (2023)
- [Learning a Probabilistic Latent Space of Object Shapes via 3D Generative-Adversarial Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.07584/) (2016)
- [Deep Learning for 3D Point Clouds: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.12033/) (2019)
- [Masked Autoencoders for Point Cloud Self-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.06604/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Network Design and Local Geometry in Point Cloud: A Simple Residual MLP Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.07123/) (2022)
- [Walk in the Cloud: Learning Curves for Point Clouds Shape Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01288/) (2021)
- [Point Convolutional Neural Networks by Extension Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10091/) (2018)
- [Deep Learning for LiDAR Point Clouds in Autonomous Driving: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.09830/) (2020)
- [Self-Supervised Few-Shot Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.14168/) (2020)
- [Dynamic Adapter Meets Prompt Tuning: Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for Point Cloud Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01439/) (2024)
- [Attention-based Point Cloud Edge Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14673/) (2023)
- [Parameter is Not All You Need: Starting from Non-Parametric Networks for 3D Point Cloud Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08134/) (2023)
- [PointHop++: A Lightweight Learning Model on Point Sets for 3D Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03281/) (2020)
- [Parameter-efficient Prompt Learning for 3D Point Cloud Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15823/) (2024)
- [Point-GN: A Non-Parametric Network Using Gaussian Positional Encoding for Point Cloud Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03056/) (2024)
- [Graph Construction with Flexible Nodes for Traffic Demand Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00276/) (2024)
- [Point-LN: A Lightweight Framework for Efficient Point Cloud Classification Using Non-Parametric Positional Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14238/) (2025)
- [Enhancing 3D Point Cloud Classification with ModelNet-R and Point-SkipNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.05198/) (2025)
- [PointDiffuse: A Dual-Conditional Diffusion Model for Enhanced Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06094/) (2025)
- [DV-ConvNet: Fully Convolutional Deep Learning on Point Clouds with Dynamic Voxelization and 3D Group Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.02918/) (2020)
- [NPNet: A Non-Parametric Network with Adaptive Gaussian-Fourier Positional Encoding for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00542/) (2026)

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

- [Efficient PEFT Methods with Adaptive Checkpointing for Vision Models and VLMs on Resource Constrained Consumer-GPUs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.02158/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present SLNet, a lightweight backbone for 3D point cloud recognition designed to achieve strong performance without the computational cost of many recent attention, graph, and deep MLP based models. The model is built on two simple ideas: NAPE (Nonparametric Adaptive Point Embedding), which captures spatial structure using a combination of Gaussian RBF and cosine bases with input adaptive bandwidth and blending, and GMU (Geometric Modulation Unit), a per channel affine modulator that adds only 2D learnable parameters. These components are used within a four stage hierarchical encoder with FPS+kNN grouping, nonparametric normalization, and shared residual MLPs. In experiments, SLNet shows that a very small model can still remain highly competitive across several 3D recognition tasks. On ModelNet40, SLNet-S with 0.14M parameters and 0.31 GFLOPs achieves 93.64% overall accuracy, outperforming PointMLP-elite with 5x fewer parameters, while SLNet-M with 0.55M parameters and 1.22 GFLOPs reaches 93.92%, exceeding PointMLP with 24x fewer parameters. On ScanObjectNN, SLNet-M achieves 84.25% overall accuracy within 1.2 percentage points of PointMLP while using 28x fewer parameters. For large scale scene segmentation, SLNet-T extends the backbone with local Point Transformer attention and reaches 58.2% mIoU on S3DIS Area 5 with only 2.5M parameters, more than 17x fewer than Point Transformer V3. We also introduce NetScore+, which extends NetScore by incorporating latency and peak memory so that efficiency can be evaluated in a more deployment oriented way. Across multiple benchmarks and hardware settings, SLNet delivers a strong overall balance between accuracy and efficiency. Code is available at: https://github.com/m-saeid/SLNet.