load balancing loss is needed in MoE

Can one expert handle all tasks perfectly?

Imagine you're a chef in a busy restaurant. One day, your kitchen is overwhelmed with orders, and you're struggling to keep up with the demand.

Think about assigning different sections of the kitchen to different chefs, each specializing in a type of dish. This way, the workload is evenly distributed, preventing any single chef from getting overwhelmed.

Example

You have 10 orders for pasta, 15 for salads, and 5 for desserts. Instead of one chef doing all dishes, you assign 3 chefs to pasta, 4 to salads, and 2 to desserts.

Remember this

Distributing tasks evenly prevents any single chef from becoming overwhelmed, ensuring efficient and balanced kitchen operations.

Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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