# ECLipsE: Efficient Compositional Lipschitz Constant Estimation for Deep Neural Networks

Source: [ECLipsE: Efficient Compositional Lipschitz Constant Estimation for Deep Neural Networks](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa756a1e209131cea67b90>)

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

Data updated: 2025-12-25T04:52:00.413Z

Authors: Yuezhu Xu, S. Sivaranjani

Published: 2024-04-05T19:36:26.000Z

## Abstract

The Lipschitz constant plays a crucial role in certifying the robustness of neural networks to input perturbations. Since calculating the exact Lipschitz constant is NP-hard, efforts have been made to obtain tight upper bounds on the Lipschitz constant. Typically, this involves solving a large matrix verification problem, the computational cost of which grows significantly for both deeper and wider networks. In this paper, we provide a compositional approach to estimate Lipschitz constants for deep feed-forward neural networks. We first obtain an exact decomposition of the large matrix verification problem into smaller sub-problems. Then, leveraging the underlying cascade structure of the network, we develop two algorithms. The first algorithm explores the geometric features of the problem and enables us to provide Lipschitz estimates that are comparable to existing methods by solving small semidefinite programs (SDPs) that are only as large as the size of each layer. The second algorithm relaxes these sub-problems and provides a closed-form solution to each sub-problem for extremely fast estimation, altogether eliminating the need to solve SDPs. The two algorithms represent different levels of trade-offs between efficiency and accuracy. Finally, we demonstrate that our approach provides a steep reduction in computation time (as much as several thousand times faster, depending on the algorithm for deeper networks) while yielding Lipschitz bounds that are very close to or even better than those achieved by state-of-the-art approaches in a broad range of experiments. In summary, our approach considerably advances the scalability and efficiency of certifying neural network robustness, making it particularly attractive for online learning tasks.

## 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.

- [Lipschitz constant estimation on California housing](<https://www.sota2.com/research/sota/lipschitz-constant-estimation-on-california-housing.md>): Lipschitz Constant Estimation; California Housing; Lipschitz Constant: 1.8.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04375>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.04375.pdf>)
