ESPnet3 - Optimiser and Scheduler Configuration

⚙️ ESPnet3: Optimiser and Scheduler Configuration

ESPnet3 wraps PyTorch Lightning so that optimisers and schedulers can be defined purely from the Hydra configuration. Two modes are supported by espnet3.components.model.LitESPnetModel.configure_optimizers:

1. a single optimiser/scheduler pair (optim + scheduler)
2. multiple optimiser/scheduler pairs (optims + schedulers)

The sections below describe both.

✅ What lives in configure_optimizers vs YAML

Layer	You control via YAML	ESPnet3 (LitESPnetModel) ensures
optim / optims blocks	Which optimiser classes and their hyperparameters	Correct parameter grouping and uniqueness
scheduler / schedulers	Scheduler types and decay schedules	Matching schedulers 1:1 with optimisers
Model parameter names	Which parts of the model each entry sees	That every trainable param is assigned once

---

1. Single optimiser

Use optim and scheduler when the entire model shares one optimiser. The entries are passed directly to hydra.utils.instantiate, so any optimiser or scheduler from PyTorch (or a custom class) is supported.

optim:
  _target_: torch.optim.AdamW
  lr: 0.001
  weight_decay: 1.0e-2

scheduler:
  _target_: torch.optim.lr_scheduler.CosineAnnealingLR
  T_max: 100000

No additional wiring is necessary because ESPnet3 instantiates both objects, attaches the scheduler to the optimiser, and returns them to Lightning.

---

1. Multiple optimisers

When different parts of the model need their own optimiser, switch to optims and schedulers. Each entry contains a nested optim block and a params string that selects parameters whose names contain the substring.

optims:
  - optim:
      _target_: torch.optim.Adam
      lr: 0.0005
    params: encoder
  - optim:
      _target_: torch.optim.Adam
      lr: 0.001
    params: decoder

schedulers:
  - scheduler:
      _target_: torch.optim.lr_scheduler.StepLR
      step_size: 5
      gamma: 0.5
  - scheduler:
      _target_: torch.optim.lr_scheduler.StepLR
      step_size: 10
      gamma: 0.1

Important rules enforced by configure_optimizers:

• Do not mix the single- and multi-optimiser modes. Either use optim + scheduler or optims + schedulers.
• Every optimiser entry must include params and optim.
• Each trainable parameter must match exactly one optimiser. ESPnet3 raises an error if parameters are missing or assigned twice.
• The number of scheduler entries must equal the number of optimisers. They are matched by position, so the first scheduler controls the first optimiser, etc.

Under the hood ESPnet3 wraps the instantiated optimisers with MultipleOptim/MultipleScheduler so that Lightning sees them as a single optimiser while still stepping all underlying objects together.