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arXiv · 2508.12996

Kourkoutas-Beta: A Sunspike-Driven Adam Optimizer with Desert Flair

Stavros C. Kassinos
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Abstract

Transformer neural networks are increasingly used for physics-based problems. In data-driven PDE surrogates, training samples from varying boundary and initial conditions can cause erratic losses and spiky gradients; in physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), stiff composite losses amplify this effect. We introduce Kourkoutas-Beta, an Adam-style optimizer where the fixed second-moment discount beta2 is replaced by a layer-wise dynamic value driven by a bounded ``sunspike'' ratio: the current pooled gradient norm divided by an exponential moving average (EMA) of past norms, squashed to the interval [0,1). Spikes lower beta2 toward beta2_min; calm phases keep it near beta2_max. Options include leaky-AMSGrad (decay), trust-region clipping (max_ratio), adaptive tiny terms, and several bias-correction modes ``none'', ``beta2max'', ``exact'). With all features off and bias_correction=``none'', the method is exactly Adam. We test on four settings: (i) a Transformer PDE surrogate (Heat2D), (ii) a 3D PINN for heat conduction (Heat3D), (iii) a lightweight MLX synthetic task with jitter and rare-trigger bursts, and (iv) a character-level Transformer on 30 MB of enwik8 (small-enwik8). Kourkoutas-Beta improves stability and final loss versus fixed-beta2 Adam. On small-enwik8 it lowers bits-per-character by about 38% vs Adam-0.95 and about 58% vs Adam-0.999 over 10 seeds, with smaller variance. The method remains drop-in, with runtime overhead comparable to Adam in testbeds A-C and within single-digit percent in testbed D. It preserves Adam-style convergence guarantees while improving robustness under spiky gradients.

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BibTeXRIS

Stavros C. Kassinos. 2025-08-18. Kourkoutas-Beta: A Sunspike-Driven Adam Optimizer with Desert Flair. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12996

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