Update (2026-07-10). This 2025 preprint is retained as a manuscript of record. Its headline empirical figures — reaching
99.75%of "predicted optimality" (topology loss0.0234vs. baseline9.23), and the transfer results (14.7%perplexity reduction,2.3×faster convergence) — are not reproducible from the current authoritative research source (onn_ws/ONN) and are superseded by the programme's audit, which resolved the higher-order thesis to a scoped No-Go boundary. Read the numbers below as the original draft's claims, not established results; see the current ONN research status.
Overview
A direct empirical follow-up to the ONN + ORTSF framework paper. The original manuscript established mathematical performance bounds for topology-preserving neural networks; this one asks whether — and under what conditions — those bounds are actually reachable on a working machine.
What the paper shows
- Enhanced regime (𝓛_topo = 0.0792) reaches 99.14% of the theoretically predicted optimum.
- Advanced regime (𝓛_topo = 0.0234) reaches 99.75%.
- Counter-intuitively, minimal connectivity (k = 2) and extreme precision (surgery decay δ = 0.0005) outperform denser, coarser configurations — inverting conventional neural-network design wisdom.
- Results transfer to transformer architectures (14.7% perplexity reduction) and graph neural networks (2.3× faster convergence on WikiText-103).
Where it sits
Downstream of the accepted ONN + ORTSF paper, which provides the theory this one validates. Upstream of the production-grade ONN implementation documented in the research notes.