Stability and Generalization of Asynchronous SGD: Sharper Bounds Beyond Lipschitz and Smoothness

Asynchronous stochastic gradient descent (ASGD) has evolved into an indispensable optimization algorithm for training modern large-scale distributed machine learning tasks. Therefore, it is imperative to explore the generalization performance of the ASGD algorithm. However, the existing results are either pessimistic and vacuous or restricted by strict assumptions that fail to reveal the intrinsic impact of asynchronous training on generalization. In this study, we establish sharper stability and generalization bounds for ASGD under much weaker assumptions. Firstly, this paper studies the on-average model stability of ASGD and provides a non-vacuous upper bound on the generalization error, without relying on the Lipschitz assumption. Furthermore, we investigate the excess generalization error of the ASGD algorithm, revealing the effects of asynchronous delay, model initialization, number of training samples and iterations on generalization performance. Secondly, for the first time, this study explores the generalization performance of ASGD in the non-smooth case. We replace smoothness with the much weaker Hölder continuous assumption and achieve similar generalization results as in the smooth case. Finally, we validate our theoretical findings by training numerous machine learning models, including convex problems and non-convex tasks in computer vision and natural language processing.