arXiv Machine Learning

A Layer Importance Metric for Quantization Accounting for the Speed-Quality Trade-off in Autoregressive Models

The paper introduces a composite metric for quantizing small language models that balances information retention and throughput gains, using a normalized SQNR-based coefficient and roofline-based latency analysis. Profiling Gemma 3 1B shows that Feed‑Forward Network blocks and the embedding matrix are prime candidates for acceleration, with the metric enabling tuning of speed‑quality trade‑offs without actual execution. The authors demonstrate that their estimates predict accelerated speedup within about 4% error and allocate resources more effectively than evolutionary search or Shapley‑value methods.

Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 27

A Layer Importance Metric for Quantization Accounting for the Speed-Quality Trade-off in Autoregressive Models

The paper introduces a composite metric for quantizing small language models that balances information retention and throughput gains. By profiling Gemma 3 1B, it identifies Feed‑Forward Network blocks and the embedding matrix as key acceleration targets, estimating quality and speed scores without actual execution. The metric, validated across architectures with ~4% prediction error, enables predictable, resource‑efficient quantization compared to evolutionary or Shapley‑based methods.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

Optimizing AI Inference Across the Deployment Stack

The paper argues that AI deployment performance depends on interactions among compression, compiler transformations, and serving policies rather than just model architecture. It introduces a three‑layer taxonomy—model‑level techniques, compiler transformations, and system policies—and frames deployment as a constrained multi‑objective optimization problem over accuracy, latency, throughput, memory footprint, and energy. The authors propose an evidence protocol for comparable benchmarking and synthesize data from edge and data‑center platforms to show that cross‑layer interactions drive deployment outcomes, concluding with a constraint‑aware selection procedure and open research problems.

By Tejinder Singh, John Pflueger, Jeebak Mitra, Robert Lincourt, Mitchell Markow, Bhavesh A. Patel
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 24

RAMP: Robust Adaptive Mixed-Precision Quantization for Edge CPU Vision Models

The paper introduces RAMP, a method for robust adaptive mixed‑precision quantization of vision models on edge CPUs. It evaluates 13 sensitivity metrics across four neural networks, finding that Jensen‑Shannon Divergence consistently identifies layers that can be safely quantized. Using K‑Means clustering on these metrics, RAMP achieves near‑lossless accuracy with an average 1.81× speed‑up, while cautioning against excluding low‑speed‑up layers that can fragment the computational graph.

By David Poblaci\'on-Criado, Dario Garcia-Gasulla, Eduardo Quinones
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 21

SpecQuant: Speculative Decoding with Multi-Parent Quantization for Adaptive LLM Inference

SpecQuant is a training‑free framework that merges speculative decoding with multi‑parent quantization to enable adaptive, efficient inference of large language models. It generates several quantized variants (INT4, FP8, FP16) from a single base model and routes queries to the appropriate variant based on predicted complexity, using lightweight models for simple tasks and full‑precision models for complex reasoning. Evaluations on Qwen2.5 models across MMLU, AlpacaEval, and GSM8K show 35‑43% speedups with less than 2% accuracy loss, facilitating practical on‑device LLM deployment without specialized infrastructure.

By Harish KB, Jagadeeswaran M, Pradheep P, Yuvanesh S, Sivakumar T