Covolution before entering the first dense block for imagenet dataset

[anthony123]

Hi, there

For the imagenet dataset, DenseNet use 7x7 Conv before entering the first dense block;
I also read the following paper condensenet , which use 3x3 conv before entering the first block.
I wonder if i can change the 7x7 conv to 3x3, and keep the pooling unchanged (since it makes densenet more parameter- efficient). Does it hurt DenseNet's performance on imagenet?

[gaohuang]

Replacing the 7x7 conv layer with a couple of 3x3 conv layers may slightly improve the performance, if you keep the number of parameters roughly unchanged. That's why CondenseNet adopts that design choice.