ES-MoE Toolkit

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Install

pip install esmoe

The distribution, the import and the CLI are all esmoe; the project is written ES-MoE in prose.

Requires ultralytics.

Use

One call covers register, graft, build and wire:

import esmoe

model = esmoe.equip("yolo11n.yaml", weight=0.01)
model.train(data="coco8.yaml", epochs=10)

Or take the steps apart when you need control over each one:

from ultralytics import YOLO
import esmoe

esmoe.inject_esmoe()                                    # make `ESMoE` resolvable in model.yaml
esmoe.graft("yolov8n.yaml", out="v8-esmoe.yaml", at=[4, 6])  # insert blocks, renumber the head
model = YOLO("v8-esmoe.yaml")
esmoe.attach_aux_loss(model, weight=0.01)               # router loss joins the training loss

From the shell:

esmoe graft yolo11n.yaml -o yolo11n-esmoe.yaml -e 4 -k 2 --at backbone_end

attach_aux_loss adds an esmoe_aux entry to the trainer's loss table, so a non-zero, back-propagated auxiliary term shows up in results.csv rather than merely in a config.

Written by hand, a grafted config layer is just:

[-1, 1, ESMoE, [4, 2]]                              # num_experts, top_k
[-1, 1, ESMoE, [4, 2, null, {out_norm: true}]]      # ... and settings the trainer must keep
[-1, 1, ESMoE, [4, 2, null, {out_channels: 320}]]   # widened ...
[-1, 1, Index, [320, 0]]                            # ... and the official layer that declares it

The block is channel preserving and infers its width on the first forward, which is what lets stock parse_model size it without a patch. A widened block instead hands a one-element list to the official Index layer after it, whose declared width parse_model does read; graft(out_channels=...) writes both. Settings belong in the config because the trainer rebuilds the model from it, dropping anything set on the blocks beforehand.

Extend

Experts and the balancing objective are plain callables, so a variant is a few lines:

esmoe.ESMoE(num_experts=4, top_k=2, expert=MyExpert, balance=my_balance_fn)

MyExpert(c1, c2, k) -> Module, my_balance_fn(probs, gate) -> scalar. To train with them, pass them to graft or equip: a function or class defined at module level goes into the config as module:qualname, and every rebuild of the model -- the trainer's, each DDP worker's -- imports it back from that name. A lambda or anything defined in __main__ is refused when grafting. esmoe.blocks(model) walks every block in a model, esmoe.collect_aux_loss(model) returns the current step's router loss for custom training loops, and block.spec() reports the settings a block is holding.

Compatibility

Verified by tests/test_ultralytics.py on ultralytics 8.4.101 and 8.4.132, which report loss items in two different shapes; both are handled. The training column is backed by real 1-epoch VisDrone runs on four generations (results/*-compat-*.json) and by the 120-epoch protocol runs on all seven, each logging a non-zero train/esmoe_aux.

Graft and forward are exercised on every row in CI. The last column separates "the block builds and trains" from "we ran the full budget-fair protocol on it"; only the YOLO-Master row is still the former alone. The YOLO-Master row runs against the fork's vendored ultralytics: scripts/fork_smoke.py grafts their yolo-master-n.yaml, trains one epoch with a non-zero esmoe_aux, and builds their own ES_MOE config alongside ours.

DDP works: attach_aux_loss routes model.train() through a trainer class that lives in esmoe.trainer, so the worker processes ultralytics spawns register the block and the auxiliary loss before they build. Verified by scripts/verify.py (the real worker file in a fresh interpreter; two gloo ranks with agreeing router gradients). Not supported together with compile=True, which turns off find_unused_parameters.

Selected default

ESMoE(num_experts=4, top_k=2) with attach_aux_loss(weight=0.01), chosen under one budget over 2/4/8-expert and top-1 variants. Under the repository protocol (VisDrone, imgsz 800, 120 epochs, three seeds) the matrix runs to seven backbone generations × three arms × three seeds and more, 113 runs. What separates a positive cell from a negative one is what the backbone ends in, not how new it is: the default wiring is positive on the SPPF family (+0.0055 v5n, +0.0025 v8n, +0.0025 v9t), sits on zero once the end is an attention block (−0.0002 v10n, +0.0013 11n), and is negative on area attention and the E2E head (−0.0018 12n, −0.0034 26n). The block costs +10.4% parameters and about 9% more wall-clock per epoch.

Each dot is one seed, each bar the mean of three. The seeds routinely straddle zero even where the mean does not, which is the honest reading of a three-seed protocol: an interactive version carries the per-seed values and the second metric. Where the damage lands depends on the backbone: v8n loses large objects (APl −0.010, 0/3), 26n loses small ones (APs −0.0045, 0/3), 12n is direction-unstable.

Further arms ask what upstream's own settings are worth. Two of them are internal to the block and both help; upstream's layout of four blocks per backbone is negative on both metrics at 0/3 on both backbones it ran on, and stays negative with each block's weight cut to a quarter so the auxiliary total matches one block — the count is what costs, not the pressure.

How concentrated the dispatch is does not predict accuracy: r = +0.044 over the 81 runs that have both a routing analysis and a paired delta. What the balancing term does secure is that no expert dies. Without it all six checkpoints lose two of four experts; the Switch term at 0.01 leaves none dead in 66. The paper's objective and upstream's read the gate, which is renormalised over the top-K and so has no gradient for an expert outside it: five of six such checkpoints have a dead expert, even at more pressure than Switch.

The default graft leaves consumers that name the old backbone end by index — YOLOv8's P5 lateral among them — reading the pre-block tensor; graft(..., rewire=True) retargets them. That arm is the only 3/3 one on v8n (+0.0036) and pulls 12n and 26n back to near parity (+0.0001 and −0.0005); only on 11n does it trail the default. Verdicts against the pre-registered lines: docs/JUDGMENT.md. Full tables: docs/SELECTION.md, results/buckets.md, results/routing.md, results/report.md.

Develop and reproduce

uv sync --group dev
uv run pytest -q
uv run python scripts/capture_env.py                  # freeze environment into env/
EPOCHS=20 FRACTION=0.25 SEEDS="0 1 2" bash scripts/sweep.sh
uv run python scripts/report.py                       # results/summary.md

Every run writes one machine-readable record to results/ (config, dataset, hardware, budget, seed, metrics, artifact, status, limitation). Read limitations.md before quoting any number. The 112 protocol checkpoints live on the checkpoints branch (Git LFS, orphan — main stays small), flat-named to match the run records.

Linked projects

• ultralytics - the official YOLO framework this plugs into.
• Tencent/YOLO-Master - where ES-MoE comes from (paper).

License

AGPL-3.0-only, matching the Ultralytics ecosystem it builds on.