Compressing Large-Scale Transformer-Based Models: A Case Study on BERT
Prakhar Ganesh, Yao Chen, Xin Lou, Mohammad Ali Khan, Yin Yang, Hassan Sajjad, Preslav Nakov, Deming Chen, Marianne Winslett
Abstract
Pre-trained Transformer-based models have achieved state-of-the-art performance for various Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. However, these models often have billions of parameters, and thus are too resource- hungry and computation-intensive to suit low- capability devices or applications with strict latency requirements. One potential remedy for this is model compression, which has attracted considerable research attention. Here, we summarize the research in compressing Transformers, focusing on the especially popular BERT model. In particular, we survey the state of the art in compression for BERT, we clarify the current best practices for compressing large-scale Transformer models, and we provide insights into the workings of various methods. Our categorization and analysis also shed light on promising future research directions for achieving lightweight, accurate, and generic NLP models.- Anthology ID:
- 2021.tacl-1.63
- Volume:
- Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Volume 9
- Month:
- Year:
- 2021
- Address:
- Cambridge, MA
- Editors:
- Brian Roark, Ani Nenkova
- Venue:
- TACL
- SIG:
- Publisher:
- MIT Press
- Note:
- Pages:
- 1061–1080
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/2021.tacl-1.63
- DOI:
- 10.1162/tacl_a_00413
- Cite (ACL):
- Prakhar Ganesh, Yao Chen, Xin Lou, Mohammad Ali Khan, Yin Yang, Hassan Sajjad, Preslav Nakov, Deming Chen, and Marianne Winslett. 2021. Compressing Large-Scale Transformer-Based Models: A Case Study on BERT. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 9:1061–1080.
- Cite (Informal):
- Compressing Large-Scale Transformer-Based Models: A Case Study on BERT (Ganesh et al., TACL 2021)
- PDF:
- https://preview.aclanthology.org/proper-vol2-ingestion/2021.tacl-1.63.pdf