Boosting Inference Efficiency: Unleashing the Power of Parameter-Shared
  Pre-trained Language Models
Weize Chen Xiaoyue Xu Xu Han Yankai Lin Ruobing Xie Zhiyuan Liu Maosong Sun Jie Zhou
Parameter-shared pre-trained language models (PLMs) have emerged as a
successful approach in resource-constrained environments, enabling substantial
reductions in model storage and memory costs without significant performance
compromise. However, it is important to note that parameter sharing does not
alleviate computational burdens associated with inference, thus impeding its
practicality in situations characterized by limited stringent latency
requirements or computational resources. Building upon neural ordinary
differential equations (ODEs), we introduce a straightforward technique to
enhance the inference efficiency of parameter-shared PLMs. Additionally, we
propose a simple pre-training technique that leads to fully or partially shared
models capable of achieving even greater inference acceleration. The
experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods on both
autoregressive and autoencoding PLMs, providing novel insights into more
efficient utilization of parameter-shared models in resource-constrained
settings.