Papers › SMU: smooth activation function for deep networks using smoothing maximum technique

SMU: smooth activation function for deep networks using smoothing maximum technique

8 Nov 2021arXiv:2111.04682archive 2025-07-28

Koushik Biswas, Sandeep Kumar, Shilpak Banerjee, Ashish Kumar Pandey

Deep learning researchers have a keen interest in proposing two new novel activation functions which can boost network performance. A good choice of activation function can have significant consequences in improving network performance. A handcrafted activation is the most common choice in neural network models. ReLU is the most common choice in the deep learning community due to its simplicity though ReLU has some serious drawbacks. In this paper, we have proposed a new novel activation function based on approximation of known activation functions like Leaky ReLU, and we call this function Smooth Maximum Unit (SMU). Replacing ReLU by SMU, we have got 6.22% improvement in the CIFAR100 dataset with the ShuffleNet V2 model.

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iFe1er/SMU mentioned on GitHubtf report
iFe1er/SMU_pytorch mentioned on GitHubpytorch report
lk18322280259/SMU mentioned on GitHubpytorch report
pwc-1/Paper-9 mindspore report

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Deep Learning

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1x1 ConvolutionAverage PoolingBatch NormalizationChannel ShuffleConvolutionDense ConnectionsDepthwise ConvolutionGlobal Average PoolingGrouped ConvolutionGroupwise Point ConvolutionMax PoolingPointwise ConvolutionReLUResidual ConnectionShuffleNetShuffleNet BlockShuffleNet V2 BlockShuffleNet V2 Downsampling BlockShuffleNet v2Softmax

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