Slow-Fast Policy Optimization: Reposition-Before-Update for LLM Reasoning
Reinforcement learning (RL) has become central to enhancing reasoning in large language models (LLMs). Yet on-policy algorithms such as Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) often suffer in early training: noisy gradients from low-quality rollouts lead to unstable updates and inefficient exploration. We introduce Slow-Fast Policy Optimization (SFPO), a simple yet efficient framework to address the above limitations via decomposing each step into three stages: a short fast trajectory of inner steps on the same batch, a reposition mechanism to control off-policy drift, and a final slow correction. This reposition-before-update design preserves the objective and rollout process unchanged, making SFPO plug-compatible with existing policy-gradient pipelines. Extensive experiments demonstrate that SFPO consistently improves stability, reduces number of rollouts, and accelerates convergence of reasoning RL training. Specifically, it outperforms GRPO by up to 2.80 points in average on math reasoning benchmarks. It also achieves up to 4.93\texttimes{} fewer rollouts and an up to 4.19\texttimes{} reduction in wall-clock time to match GRPO's best accuracy. Project website is available at https://slow-fast-po.github.io/.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Tasks
Reinforcement LearningSimilar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Can We Find Nash Equilibria at a Linear Rate in Markov Games?
We study decentralized learning in two-player zero-sum discounted Markov games where the goal is to design a policy optimization algorithm for either agent satisfying two properties. First, the player does not need to kn…
Bi-level Off-policy Reinforcement Learning for Volt/VAR Control Involving Continuous and Discrete Devices
In Volt/Var control (VVC) of active distribution networks(ADNs), both slow timescale discrete devices (STDDs) and fast timescale continuous devices (FTCDs) are involved. The STDDs such as on-load tap changers (OLTC) and …
Reinforcement Learning (RL)SlowMo: Improving Communication-Efficient Distributed SGD with Slow Momentum
Distributed optimization is essential for training large models on large datasets. Multiple approaches have been proposed to reduce the communication overhead in distributed training, such as synchronizing only after per…
BlockingDistributed Optimizationimage-classificationImage Classification+2Learning While Repositioning in On-Demand Vehicle Sharing Networks
We consider a network inventory problem motivated by one-way, on-demand vehicle sharing services. Due to uncertainties in both demand and returns, as well as a fixed number of rental units across an $n$-location network,…
Optimizing Empty Container Repositioning and Fleet Deployment via Configurable Semi-POMDPs
With the continuous growth of the global economy and markets, resource imbalance has risen to be one of the central issues in real logistic scenarios. In marine transportation, this trade imbalance leads to Empty Contain…