Snacks: a fast large-scale kernel SVM solver

Abstract: Kernel methods provide a powerful framework for non parametric learning. They are based on kernel functions and allow learning in a rich functional space while applying linear statistical learning tools, such as Ridge Regression or Support Vector Machines. However, standard kernel methods suffer from a quadratic time and memory complexity in the number of data points and thus have limited applications in large-scale learning. In this paper, we propose Snacks, a new large-scale solver for Kernel Support Vector Machines. Specifically, Snacks relies on a Nystr\"om approximation of the kernel matrix and an accelerated variant of the stochastic subgradient method. We demonstrate formally through a detailed empirical evaluation, that it competes with other SVM solvers on a variety of benchmark datasets.