Understanding Embedding Scaling in Collaborative Filtering
Authors: name: Zhuangzhuang He; name: Zhou Kaiyu; name: Haoyue Bai; name: Fengbin Zhu; name: Yonghui Yang
Published: 2025-09-19 07:33:50

Abstract: Scaling recommendation models into large recommendation models has become one
of the most widely discussed topics. Recent efforts focus on components beyond
the scaling embedding dimension, as it is believed that scaling embedding may
lead to performance degradation. Although there have been some initial
observations on embedding, the root cause of their non-scalability remains
unclear. Moreover, whether performance degradation occurs across different
types of models and datasets is still an unexplored area. Regarding the effect
of embedding dimensions on performance, we conduct large-scale experiments
across 10 datasets with varying sparsity levels and scales, using 4
representative classical architectures. We surprisingly observe two novel
phenomenon: double-peak and logarithmic. For the former, as the embedding
dimension increases, performance first improves, then declines, rises again,
and eventually drops. For the latter, it exhibits a perfect logarithmic curve.
Our contributions are threefold. First, we discover two novel phenomena when
scaling collaborative filtering models. Second, we gain an understanding of the
underlying causes of the double-peak phenomenon. Lastly, we theoretically
analyze the noise robustness of collaborative filtering models, with results
matching empirical observations.