Code Of Ethics: I acknowledge that I and all co-authors of this work have read and commit to adhering to the ICLR Code of Ethics.
Keywords: Large Language Models, Sparsity, Activation Function, ReLU Activation Function
Submission Guidelines: I certify that this submission complies with the submission instructions as described on https://iclr.cc/Conferences/2024/AuthorGuide.
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) with billions of parameters have drastically transformed AI applications. However, their demanding computation during inference has raised significant challenges for deployment on resource-constrained devices. Despite recent trends favoring alternative activation functions such as GELU or SiLU, known for increased computation, this study strongly advocates for reinstating ReLU activation in LLMs. We demonstrate that using the ReLU activation function has a negligible impact on convergence and performance while significantly reducing computation and weight transfer. This reduction is particularly valuable during the memory-bound inference step, where efficiency is paramount. Exploring sparsity patterns in ReLU-based LLMs, we unveil the reutilization of activated neurons for generating new tokens and leveraging these insights, we propose practical strategies to substantially reduce LLM inference computation up to three times, using ReLU activations with minimal performance trade-offs.
Anonymous Url: I certify that there is no URL (e.g., github page) that could be used to find authors' identity.
No Acknowledgement Section: I certify that there is no acknowledgement section in this submission for double blind review.
Primary Area: general machine learning (i.e., none of the above)
Submission Number: 6429
Loading