Google Discovers Two 20-Year-Old Bugs in Softmax-Cross-Entropy Implementation
Google researchers identify two numerical bugs in the standard softmax-cross-entropy implementation used for two decades: Softmax Collapse zeros out gradients beyond a precision cliff, and Softmax Cancellation creates a noise floor in distillation; fixes using stable log-space computations eliminate Slingshot loss spikes in grokking and improve convergence across precisions.
