# MLtuner: System Support for Automatic Machine Learning Tuning

Source: [MLtuner: System Support for Automatic Machine Learning Tuning](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa64261e209131cea02e21>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-25T20:57:11.341Z

Authors: Henggang Cui, Gregory R. Ganger, Phillip B. Gibbons

Published: 2018-03-20T14:17:36.000Z

## Abstract

MLtuner automatically tunes settings for training tunables (such as the learning rate, the momentum, the mini-batch size, and the data staleness bound) that have a significant impact on large-scale machine learning (ML) performance. Traditionally, these tunables are set manually, which is unsurprisingly error-prone and difficult to do without extensive domain knowledge. MLtuner uses efficient snapshotting, branching, and optimization-guided online trial-and-error to find good initial settings as well as to re-tune settings during execution. Experiments show that MLtuner can robustly find and re-tune tunable settings for a variety of ML applications, including image classification (for 3 models and 2 datasets), video classification, and matrix factorization. Compared to state-of-the-art ML auto-tuning approaches, MLtuner is more robust for large problems and over an order of magnitude faster.

## Recorded benchmark results

A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.07445>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.07445.pdf>)