{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/enhancing-zeroth-order-fine-tuning-for","title":"Enhancing Zeroth-order Fine-tuning for Language Models with Low-rank Structures","arxiv_id":"2410.07698","date":"2024-10-10","proceeding":null,"authors":["Yiming Chen","Yuan Zhang","Liyuan Cao","Kun Yuan","Zaiwen Wen"],"abstract":"Parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) significantly reduces memory costs when adapting large language models (LLMs) for downstream applications. However, traditional first-order (FO) fine-tuning algorithms incur substantial memory overhead due to the need to store activation values for back-propagation during gradient computation, particularly in long-context fine-tuning tasks. Zeroth-order (ZO) algorithms offer a promising alternative by approximating gradients using finite differences of function values, thus eliminating the need for activation storage. Nevertheless, existing ZO methods struggle to capture the low-rank gradient structure common in LLM fine-tuning, leading to suboptimal performance. This paper proposes a low-rank ZO gradient estimator and introduces a novel low-rank ZO algorithm (LOZO) that effectively captures this structure in LLMs. We provide convergence guarantees for LOZO by framing it as a subspace optimization method. Additionally, its low-rank nature enables LOZO to integrate with momentum techniques while incurring negligible extra memory costs. Extensive experiments across various model sizes and downstream tasks demonstrate that LOZO and its momentum-based variant outperform existing ZO methods and closely approach the performance of FO algorithms.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.07698v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.07698v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"enhancing-zeroth-order-fine-tuning-for","repo_url":"https://github.com/optsuite/LOZO","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"parameter-efficient-fine-tuning","task_name":"parameter-efficient fine-tuning"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2410.07698","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2410.07698"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/optsuite/LOZO","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran_draft_wrong":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"ran":1,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"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"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":1,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"363789a0413203c5","entry":"result_file_tag","repo":"optsuite/LOZO","repo_kind":"official","path":"large_models/run_lozo.py","file_url":"https://github.com/optsuite/LOZO/blob/HEAD/large_models/run_lozo.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"OUTPUT_MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"deterministic","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"363789a0413203c5"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}