Layer-Wise Weight Decay for Deep Neural Networks

In this paper, we propose layer-wise weight decay for efficient training of deep neural networks. Our method sets different values of the weight-decay coefficients layer by layer so that the ratio of the scale of back-propagated gradients and that of the weight decay is constant throughout the network. By utilizing such a setting, we can avoid under or over-fitting and train all layers properly without having to tune the coefficients layer by layer. Experimental results show that our method can enhance the performance of existing deep neural networks without any change of network models.