The fine art of fine-tuning: A structured review of advanced LLM fine-tuning techniques

Transformer-based models have consistently demonstrated superior accuracy compared to various traditional models across a range of downstream tasks. However, due to their large nature, training or fine-tuning them for specific tasks has heavy computational and memory demands. This causes the creatio...

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Main Authors: Samar Pratap, Alston Richard Aranha, Divyanshu Kumar, Gautam Malhotra, Anantharaman Palacode Narayana Iyer, Shylaja S.S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-06-01
Series:Natural Language Processing Journal
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949719125000202
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author Samar Pratap
Alston Richard Aranha
Divyanshu Kumar
Gautam Malhotra
Anantharaman Palacode Narayana Iyer
Shylaja S.S.
author_facet Samar Pratap
Alston Richard Aranha
Divyanshu Kumar
Gautam Malhotra
Anantharaman Palacode Narayana Iyer
Shylaja S.S.
author_sort Samar Pratap
collection DOAJ
description Transformer-based models have consistently demonstrated superior accuracy compared to various traditional models across a range of downstream tasks. However, due to their large nature, training or fine-tuning them for specific tasks has heavy computational and memory demands. This causes the creation of specialized transformer-based models to be almost impossible in the generally present constrained scenarios. To tackle this issue and to make these large models more accessible, a plethora of techniques have been developed. In this study, we will be reviewing the types of techniques developed, their impacts and benefits concerning performance and resource usage along with the latest developments in the domain. We have broadly categorized these techniques into six key areas: Changes in Training Method, Changes in Adapter, Quantization, Parameter Selection, Mixture of Experts, and Application based methods. We collated the results of various techniques on common benchmarks and also evaluated their performance on different datasets and base models.
format Article
id doaj-art-45370e07d4124e008f07468bde0c6840
institution OA Journals
issn 2949-7191
language English
publishDate 2025-06-01
publisher Elsevier
record_format Article
series Natural Language Processing Journal
spelling doaj-art-45370e07d4124e008f07468bde0c68402025-08-20T02:07:47ZengElsevierNatural Language Processing Journal2949-71912025-06-011110014410.1016/j.nlp.2025.100144The fine art of fine-tuning: A structured review of advanced LLM fine-tuning techniquesSamar Pratap0Alston Richard Aranha1Divyanshu Kumar2Gautam Malhotra3Anantharaman Palacode Narayana Iyer4Shylaja S.S.5Department of Computer Science, PES University, Bengaluru, 560085, Karnataka, IndiaDepartment of Computer Science, PES University, Bengaluru, 560085, Karnataka, IndiaDepartment of Computer Science, PES University, Bengaluru, 560085, Karnataka, IndiaDepartment of Computer Science, PES University, Bengaluru, 560085, Karnataka, India; Corresponding author.JNResearch, Bengaluru, 560085, Karnataka, IndiaDepartment of Computer Science, PES University, Bengaluru, 560085, Karnataka, IndiaTransformer-based models have consistently demonstrated superior accuracy compared to various traditional models across a range of downstream tasks. However, due to their large nature, training or fine-tuning them for specific tasks has heavy computational and memory demands. This causes the creation of specialized transformer-based models to be almost impossible in the generally present constrained scenarios. To tackle this issue and to make these large models more accessible, a plethora of techniques have been developed. In this study, we will be reviewing the types of techniques developed, their impacts and benefits concerning performance and resource usage along with the latest developments in the domain. We have broadly categorized these techniques into six key areas: Changes in Training Method, Changes in Adapter, Quantization, Parameter Selection, Mixture of Experts, and Application based methods. We collated the results of various techniques on common benchmarks and also evaluated their performance on different datasets and base models.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949719125000202AdapterFFTLLMLoRAMoEPEFT
spellingShingle Samar Pratap
Alston Richard Aranha
Divyanshu Kumar
Gautam Malhotra
Anantharaman Palacode Narayana Iyer
Shylaja S.S.
The fine art of fine-tuning: A structured review of advanced LLM fine-tuning techniques
Natural Language Processing Journal
Adapter
FFT
LLM
LoRA
MoE
PEFT
title The fine art of fine-tuning: A structured review of advanced LLM fine-tuning techniques
title_full The fine art of fine-tuning: A structured review of advanced LLM fine-tuning techniques
title_fullStr The fine art of fine-tuning: A structured review of advanced LLM fine-tuning techniques
title_full_unstemmed The fine art of fine-tuning: A structured review of advanced LLM fine-tuning techniques
title_short The fine art of fine-tuning: A structured review of advanced LLM fine-tuning techniques
title_sort fine art of fine tuning a structured review of advanced llm fine tuning techniques
topic Adapter
FFT
LLM
LoRA
MoE
PEFT
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949719125000202
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