Muon outperforms Adam by reducing curvature penalty via lower Normalized Directional Sharpness, as shown via Taylor approximation on LLM training and proven on stylized quadratic problems with heterogeneous curvature.
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Dion: Distributed Orthonormalized Updates
23 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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Pion modifies Muon's Newton-Schulz iterations into a controllable high-pass filter that anchors dominant singular values at 1 while suppressing noisy tails, outperforming Muon and AdamW in VLA and RLVR regimes.
Muon succeeds by guaranteeing local step-size optimality rather than by tracking any ideal global geometry, as random-spectrum and quasi-norm variants match its performance on language models.
MatrixFSDP places whole 2D weight matrices on single ZeRO-3 owner ranks so matrix optimizers run locally without optimizer-step collectives, preserving ZeRO-3 memory while achieving up to 54.6x optimizer-step speedup at 8 nodes.
MONA integrates Nesterov acceleration into Muon's orthogonalization framework, reporting better convergence than Muon and AdamW on MoE models up to 68B parameters trained on 1T tokens and SOTA fine-tuning results.
The same Transformer architecture follows different spectral scaling laws under different optimizers, with Muon achieving linear hard-rank scaling on tail representations while AdamW shows weak scaling, even when perplexity is matched.
Establishes matching Ω and O(min{m,n} ε^-(3p-2)/(p-1)) bounds for scale-invariant spectral-norm methods under heavy-tailed noise, plus an improved O(min{m,n} ε^-(5p-3)/(2p-2)) rate via transported Scion under Hessian Lipschitz continuity.
Proposes equivariant optimizer updates matched to layer symmetries for embeddings, SwiGLU MLPs, and MoE routers, with reported gains in validation loss and training stability on several language model architectures.
VECA learns effective visual representations using core-periphery attention where patches interact exclusively via a resolution-invariant set of learned core embeddings, achieving linear O(N) complexity while maintaining competitive performance.
A 4-bit quantization scheme for the Muon optimizer — combining pre-quantization normalization, singular-structure-aligned decomposition, and µ-law companding — recovers most full-precision training quality with up to 7.3x optimizer-state memory savings.
ZO-MOPI accelerates zeroth-order LLM fine-tuning by applying partial spectral orthogonalization from power iteration inside a momentum-projected subspace to reduce variance and exploit dominant directions.
Orth-Dion uses QR factorization on the right factor instead of column normalization to eliminate the geometric mismatch in low-rank approximations of spectral optimizers like Muon, achieving O(sqrt(L_r/T)) rate under non-Euclidean smoothness.
MuonEq introduces pre-orthogonalization equilibration schemes that improve Muon optimizer performance during large language model pretraining.
Proves linear convergence of Spectral Descent (SD) and Truncated SD for non-smooth convex problems under stated conditions, sublinear rates for regularized versions via Frank-Wolfe, and recovery guarantees for robust low-rank matrix recovery.
SF-NorMuon is a new schedule-free spectral optimizer that closes the gap with tuned AdamW on 125M-772M parameter models across 1-8x Chinchilla horizons while providing stationarity guarantees.
Zeroth-order optimization is underexplored rather than underpowered in deep learning, with limitations stemming from full-space designs that can be addressed via subspace, spectral, and systems-aware approaches.
Proximal stochastic spectral preconditioning converges for nonconvex constrained objectives under heavy-tailed noise, with a variance-reduced version achieving faster rates and a refined analysis of Muon iterations.
Compressed Gluon variants using unbiased/contraction compressors and SARAH-style variance reduction achieve convergence guarantees and lower communication costs in federated learning under layer-wise smoothness.
Proposes low-rank orthogonalization and derives low-rank Muon and MSGD variants that outperform standard Muon on GPT-2 and LLaMA pretraining while providing iteration complexity bounds.
DMuon delivers 1.48x-3.01x end-to-end and 6.85x-163x optimizer-step speedups for Muon on embodied foundation models and LLMs while matching AdamW per-step latency.
Derives finite-round upper-tail guarantee on population-empirical gap for client-sampled orthogonalized matrix momentum under heterogeneous data, with Lipschitz condition on the orthogonalizer.
Constraining fine-tuning updates with LoRA mitigates performance degradation when switching from Adam to Muon on pretrained models.
citing papers explorer
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Why Muon Outperforms Adam: A Curvature Perspective
Muon outperforms Adam by reducing curvature penalty via lower Normalized Directional Sharpness, as shown via Taylor approximation on LLM training and proven on stylized quadratic problems with heterogeneous curvature.
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Rethinking Muon Beyond Pretraining: Spectral Failures and High-Pass Remedies for VLA and RLVR
Pion modifies Muon's Newton-Schulz iterations into a controllable high-pass filter that anchors dominant singular values at 1 while suppressing noisy tails, outperforming Muon and AdamW in VLA and RLVR regimes.
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Muon is Not That Special: Random or Inverted Spectra Work Just as Well
Muon succeeds by guaranteeing local step-size optimality rather than by tracking any ideal global geometry, as random-spectrum and quasi-norm variants match its performance on language models.
-
MatrixFSDP: communication-free matrix optimizers under ZeRO-3 parameter sharding
MatrixFSDP places whole 2D weight matrices on single ZeRO-3 owner ranks so matrix optimizers run locally without optimizer-step collectives, preserving ZeRO-3 memory while achieving up to 54.6x optimizer-step speedup at 8 nodes.
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MONA: Muon Optimizer with Nesterov Acceleration for Scalable Language Model Training
MONA integrates Nesterov acceleration into Muon's orthogonalization framework, reporting better convergence than Muon and AdamW on MoE models up to 68B parameters trained on 1T tokens and SOTA fine-tuning results.
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Same Architecture, Different Capacity: Optimizer-Induced Spectral Scaling Laws
The same Transformer architecture follows different spectral scaling laws under different optimizers, with Muon achieving linear hard-rank scaling on tail representations while AdamW shows weak scaling, even when perplexity is matched.
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Scale-Invariant Neural Network Optimization: Norm Geometry and Heavy-Tailed Noise
Establishes matching Ω and O(min{m,n} ε^-(3p-2)/(p-1)) bounds for scale-invariant spectral-norm methods under heavy-tailed noise, plus an improved O(min{m,n} ε^-(5p-3)/(2p-2)) rate via transported Scion under Hessian Lipschitz continuity.
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Symmetry-Compatible Principle for Optimizer Design: Embeddings, LM Heads, SwiGLU MLPs, and MoE Routers
Proposes equivariant optimizer updates matched to layer symmetries for embeddings, SwiGLU MLPs, and MoE routers, with reported gains in validation loss and training stability on several language model architectures.
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Elastic Attention Cores for Scalable Vision Transformers
VECA learns effective visual representations using core-periphery attention where patches interact exclusively via a resolution-invariant set of learned core embeddings, achieving linear O(N) complexity while maintaining competitive performance.
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MuonQ: Enhancing Low-Bit Muon Quantization via Directional Fidelity Optimization
A 4-bit quantization scheme for the Muon optimizer — combining pre-quantization normalization, singular-structure-aligned decomposition, and µ-law companding — recovers most full-precision training quality with up to 7.3x optimizer-state memory savings.
-
Accelerating Zeroth-Order Spectral Optimization with Partial Orthogonalization from Power Iteration
ZO-MOPI accelerates zeroth-order LLM fine-tuning by applying partial spectral orthogonalization from power iteration inside a momentum-projected subspace to reduce variance and exploit dominant directions.
-
Orth-Dion: Eliminating Geometric Mismatch in Distributed Low-Rank Spectral Optimization
Orth-Dion uses QR factorization on the right factor instead of column normalization to eliminate the geometric mismatch in low-rank approximations of spectral optimizers like Muon, achieving O(sqrt(L_r/T)) rate under non-Euclidean smoothness.
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MuonEq: Balancing Before Orthogonalization with Lightweight Equilibration
MuonEq introduces pre-orthogonalization equilibration schemes that improve Muon optimizer performance during large language model pretraining.
-
Convergence of Spectral Descent for Non-smooth Optimization
Proves linear convergence of Spectral Descent (SD) and Truncated SD for non-smooth convex problems under stated conditions, sublinear rates for regularized versions via Frank-Wolfe, and recovery guarantees for robust low-rank matrix recovery.
-
Anytime Training with Schedule-Free Spectral Optimization
SF-NorMuon is a new schedule-free spectral optimizer that closes the gap with tuned AdamW on 125M-772M parameter models across 1-8x Chinchilla horizons while providing stationarity guarantees.
-
Position: Zeroth-Order Optimization in Deep Learning Is Underexplored, Not Underpowered
Zeroth-order optimization is underexplored rather than underpowered in deep learning, with limitations stemming from full-space designs that can be addressed via subspace, spectral, and systems-aware approaches.
-
Constrained Stochastic Spectral Preconditioning Converges for Nonconvex Objectives
Proximal stochastic spectral preconditioning converges for nonconvex constrained objectives under heavy-tailed noise, with a variance-reduced version achieving faster rates and a refined analysis of Muon iterations.
-
Communication-Efficient Gluon in Federated Learning
Compressed Gluon variants using unbiased/contraction compressors and SARAH-style variance reduction achieve convergence guarantees and lower communication costs in federated learning under layer-wise smoothness.
-
Low-rank Orthogonalization for Large-scale Matrix Optimization with Applications to Foundation Model Training
Proposes low-rank orthogonalization and derives low-rank Muon and MSGD variants that outperform standard Muon on GPT-2 and LLaMA pretraining while providing iteration complexity bounds.
-
DMuon: Efficient Distributed Muon Training with Near-Adam Overhead
DMuon delivers 1.48x-3.01x end-to-end and 6.85x-163x optimizer-step speedups for Muon on embodied foundation models and LLMs while matching AdamW per-step latency.
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A Note on Stability for Orthogonalized Matrix Momentum with Client Sampling
Derives finite-round upper-tail guarantee on population-empirical gap for client-sampled orthogonalized matrix momentum under heterogeneous data, with Lipschitz condition on the orthogonalizer.
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Can Muon Fine-tune Adam-Pretrained Models?
Constraining fine-tuning updates with LoRA mitigates performance degradation when switching from Adam to Muon on pretrained models.
- On the Convergence Analysis of Muon