{"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/exploring-selective-layer-fine-tuning-in","title":"Exploring Selective Layer Fine-Tuning in Federated Learning","arxiv_id":"2408.15600","date":"2024-08-28","proceeding":null,"authors":["Yuchang Sun","Yuexiang Xie","Bolin Ding","Yaliang Li","Jun Zhang"],"abstract":"Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a promising paradigm for fine-tuning foundation models using distributed data in a privacy-preserving manner. Under limited computational resources, clients often find it more practical to fine-tune a selected subset of layers, rather than the entire model, based on their task-specific data. In this study, we provide a thorough theoretical exploration of selective layer fine-tuning in FL, emphasizing a flexible approach that allows the clients to adjust their selected layers according to their local data and resources. We theoretically demonstrate that the layer selection strategy has a significant impact on model convergence in two critical aspects: the importance of selected layers and the heterogeneous choices across clients. Drawing from these insights, we further propose a strategic layer selection method that utilizes local gradients and regulates layer selections across clients. The extensive experiments on both image and text datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy compared with several baselines, highlighting its advances in identifying critical layers that adapt to the client heterogeneity and training dynamics in FL.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.15600v3","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.15600v3.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":"exploring-selective-layer-fine-tuning-in","repo_url":"https://github.com/hiyuchang/fed_sel_tune","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"federated-learning","task_name":"Federated Learning"},{"task_slug":"privacy-preserving","task_name":"Privacy Preserving"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2408.15600","mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}