arXiv — Machine Learning · · 3 min read

ERASE: EaRly bAckpropagation SchEdule for Faster Training of Modern Recommendation Systems

Mirrored from arXiv — Machine Learning for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.

Computer Science > Machine Learning

arXiv:2608.18469 (cs)
[Submitted on 19 Aug 2026]

Title:ERASE: EaRly bAckpropagation SchEdule for Faster Training of Modern Recommendation Systems

View a PDF of the paper titled ERASE: EaRly bAckpropagation SchEdule for Faster Training of Modern Recommendation Systems, by Ergan Shang and 1 other authors
View PDF HTML (experimental)
Abstract:Lightweight proxy models enable rapid experimentation without repeatedly training frontier-scale systems, but their small kernels often leave modern accelerators underutilized. Conventional training compounds this inefficiency by scheduling the forward and backward passes as disjoint phases, so spare capacity in one cannot be filled by work from the other. We reinterpret the detachment mechanism of Forward-Forward (FF) as a scheduling primitive: given a local objective, detaching a block's output removes downstream gradient dependencies, making its backward pass ready when its forward pass finishes. ERASE launches each detached subgraph's backward pass early on a separate CUDA stream, overlapping it with subsequent forward work. Execution trace on a lightweight transformer demonstrates this overlap and its limit: a kernel that saturates the device leaves no capacity for concurrency. On a large-scale click-through-rate model, detaching six dense subarchitectures improves training throughput by up to $9.51\%$ while keeping normalized entropy close to the baseline.
Subjects: Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.18469 [cs.LG]
  (or arXiv:2608.18469v1 [cs.LG] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.18469
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Ergan Shang [view email]
[v1] Wed, 19 Aug 2026 02:51:08 UTC (254 KB)
Full-text links:

Access Paper:

    View a PDF of the paper titled ERASE: EaRly bAckpropagation SchEdule for Faster Training of Modern Recommendation Systems, by Ergan Shang and 1 other authors
  • View PDF
  • HTML (experimental)
  • TeX Source

Current browse context:

cs.LG
< prev   |   next >
Change to browse by:

References & Citations

Loading...

BibTeX formatted citation

loading...
Data provided by:

Bookmark

BibSonomy Reddit
Bibliographic Tools

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data, Media

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos

Demos

Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Related Papers

Recommenders and Search Tools

Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv recommender toggle
IArxiv Recommender (What is IArxiv?)
About arXivLabs

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

Discussion (0)

Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.

Sign in →

No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.

More from arXiv — Machine Learning