MegaScale-MoE: Large-Scale Communication-Efficient Training of Mixture-of-Experts Models in Production

We present MegaScale-MoE, a production system tailored for the efficient training of large-scale mixture-of-experts (MoE) models. MoE emerges as a promising architecture to scale large language models (LLMs) to unprecedented sizes, thereby enhancing model performance. However, existing MoE training systems experience a degradation in training efficiency, exacerbated by the escalating scale of MoE models and the continuous evolution of hardware. Recognizing the pivotal role of efficient communication in enhancing MoE training, MegaScale-MoE customizes communication-efficient parallelism strategies for attention and FFNs in each MoE layer and adopts a holistic approach to overlap communication with computation at both inter- and intra-operator levels. Additionally, MegaScale-MoE applies communication compression with adjusted communication patterns to lower precision, further improving training efficiency. When training a 352B MoE model on 1,440 NVIDIA Hopper GPUs, MegaScale-MoE achieves a training throughput of 1.41M tokens/s, improving the efficiency by 1.88$\times$ compared to Megatron-LM. We share our operational experience in accelerating MoE training and hope that by offering our insights in system design, this work will motivate future research in MoE systems.

Are vision language models robust to uncertain inputs?

Robustness against uncertain and ambiguous inputs is a critical challenge for deep learning models. While recent advancements in large scale vision language models (VLMs, e.g. GPT4o) might suggest that increasing model and training dataset size would mitigate this issue, our empirical evaluation shows a more complicated picture. Testing models using two classic uncertainty quantification tasks, anomaly detection and classification under inherently ambiguous conditions, we find that newer and larger VLMs indeed exhibit improved robustness compared to earlier models, but still suffer from a tendency to strictly follow instructions, often causing them to hallucinate confident responses even when faced with unclear or anomalous inputs. Remarkably, for natural images such as ImageNet, this limitation can be overcome without pipeline modifications: simply prompting models to abstain from uncertain predictions enables significant reliability gains, achieving near-perfect robustness in several settings. However, for domain-specific tasks such as galaxy morphology classification, a lack of specialized knowledge prevents reliable uncertainty estimation. Finally, we propose a novel mechanism based on caption diversity to reveal a model's internal uncertainty, enabling practitioners to predict when models will successfully abstain without relying on labeled data.

VeriDebug: A Unified LLM for Verilog Debugging via Contrastive Embedding and Guided Correction

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable potential in debugging for various programming languages. However, the application of LLMs to Verilog debugging remains insufficiently explored. Here, we present VeriDebug, an approach that integrates contrastive representation and guided correction capabilities for automated Verilog debugging. Unlike existing methods, VeriDebug employs an embedding-based technique to accurately retrieve internal information, followed by bug-fixing. VeriDebug unifies Verilog bug detection and correction through a shared parameter space. By simultaneously learning bug patterns and fixes, it streamlines debugging via contrastive embedding and guided correction. Empirical results show the efficacy of VeriDebug in enhancing Verilog debugging. Our VeriDebugLoc, Type model achieves 64.7 accuracy in bug fixing (Acc1), a significant improvement from the existing open-source SOTAs 11.3. This performance not only outperforms open-source alternatives but also exceeds larger closed-source models like GPT-3.5-turbo (36.6), offering a more accurate alternative to conventional debugging methods.

Insights from Verification: Training a Verilog Generation LLM with Reinforcement Learning with Testbench Feedback

Large language models (LLMs) have shown strong performance in Verilog generation from natural language description. However, ensuring the functional correctness of the generated code remains a significant challenge. This paper introduces a method that integrates verification insights from testbench into the training of Verilog generation LLMs, aligning the training with the fundamental goal of hardware design: functional correctness. The main obstacle in using LLMs for Verilog code generation is the lack of sufficient functional verification data, particularly testbenches paired with design specifications and code. To address this problem, we introduce an automatic testbench generation pipeline that decomposes the process and uses feedback from the Verilog compiler simulator (VCS) to reduce hallucination and ensure correctness. We then use the testbench to evaluate the generated codes and collect them for further training, where verification insights are introduced. Our method applies reinforcement learning (RL), specifically direct preference optimization (DPO), to align Verilog code generation with functional correctness by training preference pairs based on testbench outcomes. In evaluations on VerilogEval-Machine, VerilogEval-Human, RTLLM v1.1, RTLLM v2, and VerilogEval v2, our approach consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in generating functionally correct Verilog code. We open source all training code, data, and models at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/VeriPrefer-E88B.

MAPLE: Encoding Dexterous Robotic Manipulation Priors Learned From Egocentric Videos

Large-scale egocentric video datasets capture diverse human activities across a wide range of scenarios, offering rich and detailed insights into how humans interact with objects, especially those that require fine-grained dexterous control. Such complex, dexterous skills with precise controls are crucial for many robotic manipulation tasks, yet are often insufficiently addressed by traditional data-driven approaches to robotic manipulation. To address this gap, we leverage manipulation priors learned from large-scale egocentric video datasets to improve policy learning for dexterous robotic manipulation tasks. We present MAPLE, a novel method for dexterous robotic manipulation that exploits rich manipulation priors to enable efficient policy learning and better performance on diverse, complex manipulation tasks. Specifically, we predict hand-object contact points and detailed hand poses at the moment of hand-object contact and use the learned features to train policies for downstream manipulation tasks. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of MAPLE across existing simulation benchmarks, as well as a newly designed set of challenging simulation tasks, which require fine-grained object control and complex dexterous skills. The benefits of MAPLE are further highlighted in real-world experiments using a dexterous robotic hand, whereas simultaneous evaluation across both simulation and real-world experiments has remained underexplored in prior work.

Development and Experimental Evaluation of a Vibration-Based Adhesion System for Miniature Wall-Climbing Robots

In recent years, miniature wall-climbing robots have attracted widespread attention due to their significant potential in equipment inspection and in-situ repair applications. Traditional wall-climbing systems typically rely on electromagnetic, electrostatic, vacuum suction, or van der Waals forces for controllable adhesion. However, these conventional methods impose limitations when striving for both a compact design and high-speed mobility. This paper proposes a novel Vibration-Based Adhesion (VBA) technique, which utilizes a flexible disk vibrating near a surface to generate a strong and controllable attractive force without direct contact. By employing an electric motor as the vibration source, the constructed VBA system was experimentally evaluated, achieving an adhesion-to-weight ratio exceeding 51 times. The experimental results demonstrate that this adhesion mechanism not only provides a high normal force but also maintains minimal shear force, making it particularly suitable for high-speed movement and heavy load applications in miniature wall-climbing robots.

Dynamic Importance in Diffusion U-Net for Enhanced Image Synthesis

Traditional diffusion models typically employ a U-Net architecture. Previous studies have unveiled the roles of attention blocks in the U-Net. However, they overlook the dynamic evolution of their importance during the inference process, which hinders their further exploitation to improve image applications. In this study, we first theoretically proved that, re-weighting the outputs of the Transformer blocks within the U-Net is a "free lunch" for improving the signal-to-noise ratio during the sampling process. Next, we proposed Importance Probe to uncover and quantify the dynamic shifts in importance of the Transformer blocks throughout the denoising process. Finally, we design an adaptive importance-based re-weighting schedule tailored to specific image generation and editing tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that, our approach significantly improves the efficiency of the inference process, and enhances the aesthetic quality of the samples with identity consistency. Our method can be seamlessly integrated into any U-Net-based architecture. Code: https://github.com/Hytidel/UNetReweighting

Exploration-Driven Generative Interactive Environments

Modern world models require costly and time-consuming collection of large video datasets with action demonstrations by people or by environment-specific agents. To simplify training, we focus on using many virtual environments for inexpensive, automatically collected interaction data. Genie, a recent multi-environment world model, demonstrates simulation abilities of many environments with shared behavior. Unfortunately, training their model requires expensive demonstrations. Therefore, we propose a training framework merely using a random agent in virtual environments. While the model trained in this manner exhibits good controls, it is limited by the random exploration possibilities. To address this limitation, we propose AutoExplore Agent - an exploration agent that entirely relies on the uncertainty of the world model, delivering diverse data from which it can learn the best. Our agent is fully independent of environment-specific rewards and thus adapts easily to new environments. With this approach, the pretrained multi-environment model can quickly adapt to new environments achieving video fidelity and controllability improvement. In order to obtain automatically large-scale interaction datasets for pretraining, we group environments with similar behavior and controls. To this end, we annotate the behavior and controls of 974 virtual environments - a dataset that we name RetroAct. For building our model, we first create an open implementation of Genie - GenieRedux and apply enhancements and adaptations in our version GenieRedux-G. Our code and data are available at https://github.com/insait-institute/GenieRedux.

Inaccuracy of an E-Dictionary and Its Influence on Chinese Language Users

Electronic dictionaries have largely replaced paper dictionaries and become central tools for L2 learners seeking to expand their vocabulary. Users often assume these resources are reliable and rarely question the validity of the definitions provided. The accuracy of major E-dictionaries is seldom scrutinized, and little attention has been paid to how their corpora are constructed. Research on dictionary use, particularly the limitations of electronic dictionaries, remains scarce. This study adopts a combined method of experimentation, user survey, and dictionary critique to examine Youdao, one of the most widely used E-dictionaries in China. The experiment involved a translation task paired with retrospective reflection. Participants were asked to translate sentences containing words that are insufficiently or inaccurately defined in Youdao. Their consultation behavior was recorded to analyze how faulty definitions influenced comprehension. Results show that incomplete or misleading definitions can cause serious misunderstandings. Additionally, students exhibited problematic consultation habits. The study further explores how such flawed definitions originate, highlighting issues in data processing and the integration of AI and machine learning technologies in dictionary construction. The findings suggest a need for better training in dictionary literacy for users, as well as improvements in the underlying AI models used to build E-dictionaries.

SIGHT: Single-Image Conditioned Generation of Hand Trajectories for Hand-Object Interaction

We introduce a novel task of generating realistic and diverse 3D hand trajectories given a single image of an object, which could be involved in a hand-object interaction scene or pictured by itself. When humans grasp an object, appropriate trajectories naturally form in our minds to use it for specific tasks. Hand-object interaction trajectory priors can greatly benefit applications in robotics, embodied AI, augmented reality and related fields. However, synthesizing realistic and appropriate hand trajectories given a single object or hand-object interaction image is a highly ambiguous task, requiring to correctly identify the object of interest and possibly even the correct interaction among many possible alternatives. To tackle this challenging problem, we propose the SIGHT-Fusion system, consisting of a curated pipeline for extracting visual features of hand-object interaction details from egocentric videos involving object manipulation, and a diffusion-based conditional motion generation model processing the extracted features. We train our method given video data with corresponding hand trajectory annotations, without supervision in the form of action labels. For the evaluation, we establish benchmarks utilizing the first-person FPHAB and HOI4D datasets, testing our method against various baselines and using multiple metrics. We also introduce task simulators for executing the generated hand trajectories and reporting task success rates as an additional metric. Experiments show that our method generates more appropriate and realistic hand trajectories than baselines and presents promising generalization capability on unseen objects. The accuracy of the generated hand trajectories is confirmed in a physics simulation setting, showcasing the authenticity of the created sequences and their applicability in downstream uses.