Papers › DiracNets: Training Very Deep Neural Networks Without Skip-Connections

DiracNets: Training Very Deep Neural Networks Without Skip-Connections

1 Jun 2017arXiv:1706.00388archive 2025-07-28

Sergey Zagoruyko, Nikos Komodakis

Deep neural networks with skip-connections, such as ResNet, show excellent performance in various image classification benchmarks. It is though observed that the initial motivation behind them - training deeper networks - does not actually hold true, and the benefits come from increased capacity, rather than from depth. Motivated by this, and inspired from ResNet, we propose a simple Dirac weight parameterization, which allows us to train very deep plain networks without explicit skip-connections, and achieve nearly the same performance. This parameterization has a minor computational cost at training time and no cost at all at inference, as both Dirac parameterization and batch normalization can be folded into convolutional filters, so that network becomes a simple chain of convolution-ReLU pairs. We are able to match ResNet-1001 accuracy on CIFAR-10 with 28-layer wider plain DiracNet, and closely match ResNets on ImageNet. Our parameterization also mostly eliminates the need of careful initialization in residual and non-residual networks. The code and models for our experiments are available at https://github.com/szagoruyko/diracnets

PaperPDFCodeCode Syntology ran

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="1706.00388")

Code

Syntology Ran 3 of 3 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 0 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 1 ran · honoured contract; 2 ran · our draft was wrong.

By repository: official repository: 3 samples from 1 repository, 3 ran. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.

szagoruyko/diracnets officialmentioned in papermentioned on GitHubpytorch report
escorciav/roi_pooling mentioned on GitHubpytorch report
osmr/imgclsmob mentioned on GitHubmxnetMIT report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

3 samples harvested; 3 ran; 1 honoured the contract we drafted; 0 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.

1ran · honoured contract
2ran · our draft was wrong

Licence: 3 of the 3 samples are pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.

Harvested from szagoruyko/diracnets. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.

Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.

Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.

cast szagoruyko/diracnets/diracnet.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong no licence file found · pointer only · 152b486f18bee7d5 · report
conv_params szagoruyko/diracnets/diracnet.py official repository ran · honoured contract no licence file found · pointer only · eb1bb3521299a71f · report
linear_params szagoruyko/diracnets/diracnet.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong no licence file found · pointer only · 56fc1a732300a9e5 · report

Tasks

Image Classificationimage-classification

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Methods

1x1 ConvolutionAverage PoolingBatch NormalizationBottleneck Residual BlockConvolutionGlobal Average PoolingKaiming InitializationMax PoolingReLUResidual BlockResidual Connection

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections