Convergence of Clipped SGD on Convex $(L_0,L_1)$-Smooth Functions

Ofir Gaash, Kfir Y. Levy, Yair Carmon

Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 38 Main Conference (NeurIPS 2025) Main Conference Track DOI: 10.52202/085713-4019

We study stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with gradient clipping on convex functions under a generalized smoothness assumption called $(L_0,L_1)$-smoothness. Using gradient clipping, we establish a high probability convergence rate that matches the SGD rate in the $L$ smooth case up to polylogarithmic factors and additive terms. We also propose a variation of adaptive SGD with gradient clipping, which achieves the same guarantee. We perform empirical experiments to examine our theory and algorithmic choices.