Batched Low-Rank Adaptation of Foundation Models

Yeming Wen, Swarat Chaudhuri

Keywords: LLM Adaptation, Low-rank, Code Generation

TL;DR: we introduce Fast LoRA (FLoRA), a framework in which each input example in a minibatch can be associated with its unique low-rank adaptation weights, allowing for efficient batching for diverse LLM queries.

Abstract:

Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) has recently gained attention for fine-tuning foundation models by incorporating trainable low-rank matrices, thereby reducing the number of trainable parameters. While LoRA offers numerous advantages, its applicability for real-time serving to a diverse and global user base is constrained by its incapability to handle multiple task-specific adapters efficiently. This imposes a performance bottleneck in scenarios requiring personalized, task-specific adaptations for each incoming request.

To address this, we introduce FLORA (Fast LoRA), a framework in which each input example in a minibatch can be associated with its unique low-rank adaptation weights, allowing for efficient batching of heterogeneous requests. We empirically demonstrate that FLORA retains the performance merits of LoRA, showcasing competitive results on the MultiPL-E code generation benchmark spanning over 6 languages.

Submission Number: 31