A system, having a memory that stores computer executable components, and a processor that executes the computer executable components, reduces data size in connection with training a neural network by exploiting spatial locality to weight matrices and effecting frequency transformation and compression. A receiving component receives neural network data in the form of a compressed frequency-domain weight matrix. A segmentation component segments the initial weight matrix into original sub-components, wherein respective original sub-components have spatial weights. A sampling component applies a generalized weight distribution to the respective original sub-components to generate respective normalized sub-components. A transform component applies a transform to the respective normalized sub-components. A cropping component crops high-frequency weights of the respective transformed normalized sub-components to yield a set of low-frequency normalized sub-components to generate a compressed representation of the original sub-components.