Classical analysis of convex and non-convex optimization methods often requires the Lipshitzness of the gradient, which limits the analysis to functions bounded by quadratics. Recent work relaxed this requirement to a non-uniform smoothness condition with the Hessian norm bounded by an affine function of the gradient norm, and proved convergence in the non-convex setting via gradient clipping, assuming bounded noise. In this paper, we further generalize this non-uniform smoothness condition and develop a simple, yet powerful analysis technique that bounds the gradients along the trajectory, thereby leading to stronger results for both convex and non-convex optimization problems. In particular, we obtain the classical convergence rates for (stochastic) gradient descent and Nesterov's accelerated gradient method in the convex and/or non-convex setting under this general smoothness condition. The new analysis approach does not require gradient clipping and allows heavy-tailed noise with bounded variance in the stochastic setting.

本文介绍了一种新的非均匀光滑条件下的优化方法，并开发出一种简单但有效的分析技术来限制沿轨迹的梯度，从而获得更强的凸优化和非凸优化问题的结果。我们通过这种新方法证明了（随机）梯度下降和Nesterov加速梯度法在这种一般的光滑条件下的收敛率，而不需要梯度剪裁，并允许在随机场景中的有界方差的重尾噪声。

广义平滑下的凸优化和非凸优化