# CoRA-NAS: Coarse Ranking and Anchor-Residual Refinement for Neural Architecture Search

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11884 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11884/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [DARTS: Differentiable Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09055/) (2018)
- [SNIP: Single-shot Network Pruning based on Connection Sensitivity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.02340/) (2018)
- [Once-for-All: Train One Network and Specialize it for Efficient Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09791/) (2019)
- [Hyperband: A Novel Bandit-Based Approach to Hyperparameter Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.06560/) (2016)
- [ProxylessNAS: Direct Neural Architecture Search on Target Task and Hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00332/) (2018)
- [Pruning neural networks without any data by iteratively conserving synaptic flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05467/) (2020)
- [Picking Winning Tickets Before Training by Preserving Gradient Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.07376/) (2020)
- [BOHB: Robust and Efficient Hyperparameter Optimization at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.01774/) (2018)
- [NAS-Bench-201: Extending the Scope of Reproducible Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00326/) (2020)
- [Single Path One-Shot Neural Architecture Search with Uniform Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00420/) (2019)
- [NAS-Bench-101: Towards Reproducible Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09635/) (2019)
- [Neural Architecture Search without Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04647/) (2020)
- [Zero-Cost Proxies for Lightweight NAS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08134/) (2021)
- [BANANAS: Bayesian Optimization with Neural Architectures for Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.11858/) (2019)
- [Neural Architecture Search on ImageNet in Four GPU Hours: A Theoretically Inspired Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.11535/) (2021)
- [NATS-Bench: Benchmarking NAS Algorithms for Architecture Topology and Size](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.00437/) (2020)
- [How Powerful are Performance Predictors in Neural Architecture Search?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.01177/) (2021)
- [Zen-NAS: A Zero-Shot NAS for High-Performance Deep Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.01063/) (2021)
- [NAS-Bench-NLP: Neural Architecture Search Benchmark for Natural Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07116/) (2020)
- [TransNAS-Bench-101: Improving Transferability and Generalizability of Cross-Task Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.11871/) (2021)
- [ZiCo: Zero-shot NAS via Inverse Coefficient of Variation on Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11300/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Efficient Performance Estimators of Neural Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03064/) (2020)
- [Efficient Bayesian Learning Curve Extrapolation using Prior-Data Fitted Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.20447/) (2023)
- [NAS-Bench-Suite-Zero: Accelerating Research on Zero Cost Proxies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03230/) (2022)
- [AZ-NAS: Assembling Zero-Cost Proxies for Network Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19232/) (2024)
- [Speedy Performance Estimation for Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04492/) (2020)
- [NAS-Bench-x11 and the Power of Learning Curves](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.03602/) (2021)
- [GradSign: Model Performance Inference with Theoretical Insights](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08616/) (2021)
- [Auto-Prox: Training-Free Vision Transformer Architecture Search via Automatic Proxy Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09059/) (2023)
- [SWAP-NAS: Sample-Wise Activation Patterns for Ultra-fast NAS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04161/) (2024)

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

- [RiPPLE: Cross-Space Performance Prediction from Early Training for Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12418/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Zero-cost proxies rank architectures cheaply, but their reliability varies across search spaces. We introduce CoRA-NAS (COarse Ranking + Anchor-residual), a two-stage framework combining a static ranking prior with low-cost learning-curve refinement. CoRA-Rank aggregates capacity and structure-at-initialization proxies through an equal-weight log-rank consensus and a target-free consensus gate. CoRA-Refine samples anchors across this prior, extrapolates their early validation curves, and propagates a learned residual correction with an ExtraTrees model. The refinement uses approximately 1% of the cost of fully training the candidate set. Fully trained architecture-accuracy labels are not used to fit the ranker. One configuration is used across spaces, with space-specific architecture encodings. Across NAS-Bench-201, NAS-Bench-101, TransNAS-Bench-101, and NATS-SSS, CoRA-Refine achieves mean Spearman correlations of 0.946, 0.715, 0.786, and 0.894, respectively. Its worst-space correlation of 0.715 is the highest among the compared methods. On NAS-Bench-201/CIFAR-100, its selected architecture reaches 73.32% accuracy, near the reported ground-truth best of 73.37%. On the pure size space, refinement recovers the static prior's shortfall relative to parameter count, while remaining tied with the strongest capacity proxies within noise. The resulting framework combines cross-space ranking robustness with low-cost architecture selection.