Giorgio Gilestro
39f6c9f4df
The easy task families saturated 7B (strings & arith at 1.00), so the earlier
7B nulls — moe: fusion 0.87 > union 0.84; directed ~= soup — could not separate
"refinements don't help at scale" from "tasks too easy at 7B". Adds a hard task
variant (hard: true in tasks.py: multi-step lists, Caesar ciphers / letter
transforms, multi-step & larger arithmetic; same family labels and answer
formats, threaded through make_tasks/train_specialist/runners; hard specialists
cache separately as spec_*_hard) and re-runs both experiments at 7B on Imperial
CX3 (one L40S, 24 min, unsaturated: arith ~0.48, strings 0.67, lists 0.34).
Both nulls flip back to the 0.5B ordering:
- Union beats fusion again: routing 0.500 > fusion 0.40 (soup 0.392 / ties
0.400), the same 10-pt margin as 0.5B. Fusion dilutes the fragile strings
specialist so hard (0.665 -> soup 0.300) that soup even trails the best single
specialist (0.425); routing keeps it intact (0.670).
- Directed selection beats soup again: 0.492 > 0.392 (+10 pts), recovering most
of routing's benefit from one deployable merged model (lifts strings to 0.630).
Correction to the earlier interpretation: the llm_moe_hpc "regime flip" and the
llm_directed_hpc "no headroom" null were driven by TASK SATURATION, not base
capability. The operative variable is headroom — "merge, don't average" (union >
fusion) and "directed sex" (selection > single blend) hold whenever there is room
to lose to dilution: a weak base (0.5B) OR hard tasks at a strong base (7B-hard).
Fusion only wins in the degenerate corner where easy tasks let a strong base
compose to the 1.00 ceiling. Vindicates E8's max > mean in real 7B weights once
saturation is controlled.
Default (easy) task behaviour is unchanged (hard defaults False). +1 hard-task
test (131 green). Excludes the 0.5B smoke bundle (a pipeline gate, not a
deliverable). Results in results/llm_{moe,directed}_hard_hpc/ (parquet gitignored).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
45 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
45 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
# llm_moe_hard_hpc — union vs fusion on HARD (unsaturated) tasks at 7B: the flip was a saturation artefact
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**Claim tested.** `llm_moe_hpc` found fusion beating union at 7B (soup 0.87 > routing 0.84) and read it
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as "a capable base lets averaging compose." But the easy families were *saturated* (strings & arith at
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1.00), so that flip could have been an artefact of no headroom rather than base capability. This run
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re-runs the union-vs-fusion contrast on the **hard task variant** (multi-step lists, Caesar ciphers /
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letter transforms, multi-step & larger arithmetic), where 7B is **not** saturated. One **L40S (46 GB)**
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GPU, Imperial CX3.
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**Setup.** Base **Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct**, `hard: true`, fresh hard specialists (cached `spec_*_hard`),
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200 test tasks/family, seed 1. Same five operators as `llm_moe_hpc`.
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### Results (accuracy — nothing saturated; arith ≈ 0.48, strings 0.67, lists 0.34)
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| operator | lists | strings | arith | overall | worst-family | router |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| best specialist (strings) | 0.155 | 0.665 | 0.455 | 0.425 | 0.155 | — |
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| fuse: soup | 0.390 | 0.300 | 0.485 | 0.392 | 0.300 | — |
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| fuse: ties | 0.385 | 0.330 | 0.485 | 0.400 | 0.330 | — |
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| **route: oracle** | 0.335 | **0.670** | 0.495 | **0.500** | 0.335 | 1.00 |
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| **route: learned** | 0.335 | 0.670 | 0.495 | **0.500** | 0.335 | 1.00 |
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| max-merge | 0.215 | 0.195 | 0.480 | 0.297 | 0.195 | — |
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### The finding: the 7B "fusion wins" flip was saturation, not capability
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- **Union beats fusion again — decisively.** Routing **0.500 > fusion 0.40 (soup 0.392 / ties 0.400)**,
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a 10-point margin, the *same* ordering as 0.5B. The easy-task flip (fusion > union at 7B) does **not**
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survive once the tasks are hard enough to leave headroom.
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- **Fusion dilutes so badly it loses to the best single specialist.** On hard tasks the strings skill
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(Caesar ciphers etc.) is fragile: the strings-specialist scores **0.665**, but soup washes it out to
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**0.300** — so soup (0.392 overall) even trails the best *single* specialist (0.425). Routing keeps
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the specialist intact (strings 0.670) and wins. Dilution is severe exactly when the specialist's
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contribution is hard-won.
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- **So "merge, don't average" is a HEADROOM law, not a base-size law.** Union > fusion whenever there
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is room to lose to dilution — a weak base (0.5B) *or* hard tasks at a strong base (7B-hard). Fusion
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only wins in the degenerate corner where the tasks are so easy the strong base composes to the 1.00
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ceiling (7B-easy). This corrects the `llm_moe_hpc` interpretation: base capability was a confound;
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the operative variable is task headroom.
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- **Riders unchanged.** Learned router still perfect (1.00, lexical families); `max_merge` still the
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weakest union (0.297, not input-adaptive).
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### Takeaway
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On genuinely hard, unsaturated tasks, the union operator (routing) beats fusion at 7B by the same
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margin it does at 0.5B — E8's `max > mean` in real weights, robust across scale once you control for
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saturation. The `llm_moe_hpc` flip is re-read as a saturation artefact. **Falsifier (not triggered):**
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fusion matching/beating routing on hard tasks — instead fusion diluted below even the best specialist.
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Provenance in `manifest.json` (`hard: true`, L40S, torch 2.12.1 / transformers 5.13.0 / peft 0.19.1).
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