Practical Quantization for Large Language Models
Chapter 1: Foundations of Model Quantization
Introduction to Model Compression
Why Quantize Large Language Models?
Representing Numbers: Floating-Point vs. Fixed-Point
Integer Data Types in Quantization
Quantization Schemes: Symmetric vs. Asymmetric
Quantization Granularity Options
Measuring Quantization Error
Overview of Quantization Techniques
Quiz for Chapter 1
Chapter 2: Post-Training Quantization (PTQ)
Principles of Post-Training Quantization
Calibration: Selecting Representative Data
Static vs. Dynamic Quantization
Common PTQ Algorithms
Handling Outliers in PTQ
Applying PTQ to LLM Layers
Limitations of Basic PTQ
Hands-on Practical: Applying Static PTQ
Quiz for Chapter 2
Chapter 3: Advanced PTQ Techniques
Introduction to GPTQ
Understanding GPTQ Algorithm Mechanics
AWQ: Activation-aware Weight Quantization
SmoothQuant: Mitigating Activation Outliers
Comparing Advanced PTQ Methods
Implementation Considerations for Advanced PTQ
Hands-on Practical: Quantizing with GPTQ
Quiz for Chapter 3
Chapter 4: Quantization-Aware Training (QAT)
Need for Quantization-Aware Training
Simulating Quantization Effects During Training
Straight-Through Estimator (STE)
Implementing QAT with Deep Learning Frameworks
Fine-tuning Models with Quantization Nodes
Benefits and Drawbacks of QAT vs. PTQ
Practical Considerations for QAT Execution
Hands-on Practical: Setting up a Simple QAT Run
Quiz for Chapter 4
Chapter 5: Quantization Formats and Tooling
Overview of Common Quantized Model Formats
GGUF: Structure and Usage
GPTQ Format: Library Support and Implementation
AWQ Format Details
Working with Hugging Face Transformers and Optimum
Using bitsandbytes for Quantization
Tools for Model Conversion and Loading
Practice: Converting and Loading Quantized Formats
Quiz for Chapter 5
Chapter 6: Evaluating and Deploying Quantized LLMs
Metrics for Evaluating Quantized Models
Benchmarking Inference Speed and Memory Usage
Hardware Considerations for Quantized Inference
Deployment Strategies for Quantized LLMs
Troubleshooting Common Quantization Issues
Analyzing Accuracy vs. Performance Trade-offs
Practice: Benchmarking a Quantized LLM
Quiz for Chapter 6
Introduction to Model Compression
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- Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network, Geoffrey Hinton, Oriol Vinyals, Jeff Dean, 2015 arXiv preprint arXiv:1503.02531 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1503.02531 - The original paper introducing knowledge distillation, a technique where a smaller model learns from a larger, pre-trained teacher model.
- Deep Compression: Compressing Deep Neural Networks with Pruning, Trained Quantization and Huffman Coding, Song Han, Huizi Mao, William J. Dally, 2016 International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1510.00149 - Presents a method combining pruning, quantization, and Huffman coding to significantly compress deep neural networks.
- A Survey on Model Compression for Large Language Models, Xunyu Zhu, Jian Li, Yong Liu, Can Ma, Weiping Wang, 2023 Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics (TACL) (MIT Press) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2308.07633 - A recent survey specifically focusing on various compression techniques applied to Large Language Models.