Deploying Quantized LLMs for Efficient Inference
Chapter 1: Advanced LLM Quantization Fundamentals
Revisiting Quantization Principles for Large Models
Low-Bit Quantization Techniques (Below INT8)
Understanding Quantization Data Types and Formats
Post-Training Quantization (PTQ) Algorithms for LLMs
Quantization-Aware Training (QAT) Considerations
Mixed-Precision Quantization Strategies
Calibration Data Selection and Preparation
Hands-on Practical: Applying GPTQ to an LLM
Chapter 2: Implementing LLM Quantization with Toolkits
Overview of LLM Quantization Libraries
Using bitsandbytes for Low-Bit Operations
Quantization with Hugging Face Transformers and Accelerate
Applying GPTQ using AutoGPTQ
Applying AWQ using AutoAWQ
Comparing Toolkit Outputs and Performance
Handling Model Compatibility Issues
Practice: Quantizing Models with Multiple Toolkits
Chapter 3: Performance Evaluation of Quantized LLMs
Metrics for Quantized Model Evaluation
Measuring Inference Latency and Throughput
Assessing Memory Consumption (Disk and Runtime)
Evaluating Accuracy Degradation
Benchmarking Frameworks and Tools
Analyzing Performance on Target Hardware
Visualizing Performance Trade-offs
Hands-on Practical: Benchmarking a Quantized LLM
Chapter 4: Optimizing and Deploying Quantized LLMs
Inference Optimization Techniques Post-Quantization
Choosing the Right Deployment Framework
Deploying with Text Generation Inference (TGI)
Leveraging vLLM for High-Throughput Inference
GPU Optimization with NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM
Deployment using ONNX Runtime
Containerization and Scaling Strategies
Monitoring Deployed Quantized Models
Hands-on Practical: Deploying via an Inference Server
Chapter 5: Addressing Advanced Challenges
Mitigating Accuracy Loss in Low-Bit Regimes
Handling Activation and Weight Outliers
Quantizing Specific LLM Components (Attention, Normalization)
Hardware Constraints and Kernel Availability
Dynamic Quantization vs. Static Quantization Trade-offs
Debugging Quantization Issues
Integrating Quantized Models into Production Pipelines
Practice: Fine-tuning Quantization Parameters
Inference Optimization Techniques Post-Quantization
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- FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Aware Operators, Tri Dao, Daniel Y. Fu, Stefano Ermon, Atri Rudra, Christopher Ré, 2022 Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2205.14135 - Presents the FlashAttention algorithm, which significantly improves the speed and memory efficiency of attention mechanisms by reordering computations and minimizing memory I/O, particularly relevant for LLMs.
- vLLM: Universal and Efficient Engine for Large Language Model Inference, Woosuk Kwon, Zhuohan Li, Siyuan Zhuang, Ying Sheng, Lianmin Zheng, Cody Hao Yu, Joseph E. Gonzalez, Hao Zhang, Ion Stoica, 2023 SOSP 2023 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2309.06180 - Introduces PagedAttention, a key memory management technique that optimizes KV cache usage, allowing for higher throughput and reduced memory fragmentation in LLM inference.
- QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMs on Consumer GPUs, Tim Dettmers, Artidoro Pagnoni, Ari Holtzman, Luke Zettlemoyer, 2023 arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.14314 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2305.14314 - Details the QLoRA method, which relies on 4-bit NormalFloat (NF4) quantization and includes optimized CUDA kernels, often implemented through libraries like
bitsandbytes, for efficient computation of quantized models. - NVIDIA TensorRT Documentation, NVIDIA Corporation, 2024 (NVIDIA) - Provides information on the optimization techniques used in TensorRT, including kernel fusion, graph optimizations, and hardware-specific tuning, which are applied to quantized models for efficient deployment.