arXiv Machine Learning

Attention Quantization for Tabular Foundation Models

The paper introduces a quantization technique for tabular foundation models that focuses on converting queries, keys, and values to FP8 and employing explicit FP8 matrix multiplication to accelerate attention calculations. It emphasizes aligning quantization errors between training and test rows to avoid accuracy loss, and demonstrates up to 1.7× speedup over 16‑bit kernels with no significant accuracy degradation on TabPFN‑v3 and TabICLv2 across TabArena and BeyondArena.

arXiv AI
Sep 17

HyQuant: Hybrid-Precision Quantization for LLM Attention

HyQuant introduces a hybrid-precision quantization framework for large language model (LLM) attention modules. It quantizes most attention states to low-bit formats while preserving a small set of vertical‑line tokens and local‑window states in full precision, guided by lightweight attention‑pattern signals. This design achieves near‑lossless accuracy across tasks while improving memory and hardware efficiency.

By Jiatong Ding, Bingxin Xing, Yu Zhang, Dian Ding, Xiaodong Yi, Xianbin Ouyang, Feihu Zhou, Kun Zhang, Zhenyu Guo, Hao Pan, Guangtao Xue, Yiming Zhang
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 29

Benchmarking Attention for Tabular Foundation Models

The paper introduces a reproducible benchmark for evaluating attention mechanisms in tabular foundation models, focusing on the distinct row and column attention patterns that differ from language model attention. It compares several backends—Torch SDPA, FlashAttention variants, vLLM, and SageAttention—across realistic tabular shapes on A100, H100, and B200 GPUs, revealing that optimal backend choice varies by attention type, hardware, and model specifics. The study finds FlashAttention generally performs best, but CuDNN can outperform it for column attention on longer sequences, while SageAttention excels for large row sequences beyond 16k rows.

By Maximilian Schambach, Clemens Biehl, Sam Thelin
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 1

RaBitQCache: Rotated Binary Quantization for KVCache in Long Context LLM Inference

arXiv:2606. 31519v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-context Large Language Model inference is severely bottlenecked by the massive Key-Value (KV) cache, yet existing sparse attention methods often suffer from static fixed-budget (Top-k) retrieval or rely on proxy scores that are computationally expensive and biased.

By Wenhao Li, Jinhao Dong, Hailin Zhang, Wenhang Shi, Wei Lu, Xiaoyong Du
arXiv AI
Sep 30

LeapQuant: Efficient Linear Attention with Accurate Recurrent State Quantization

arXiv:2609.38166v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent LLMs increasingly adopt hybrid designs that replace standard attention with linear attention, such as Gated DeltaNet (GDN) and Kimi Delta Atte...

By Yi Pan, Haocheng Xi, Kan Zhu, Xingyang Li, Yibo Wu, Mayank Mishra, Hongtao Zhang, William X. Zheng, Baris Kasikci, Song Han, Kurt Keutzer, Rishabh Iyer, Ion Stoica
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 22

A Comprehensive Evaluation on Quantization Techniques for Large Language Models

The paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of post‑training quantization (PTQ) techniques for large language models (LLMs), addressing gaps in prior work by conducting fair, large‑scale experiments on text‑only LLMs. It decouples quantization into pre‑quantization transformation and error mitigation, systematically studies granularity, symmetry, and data formats (MXFP4, NVFP4), and finds that rotation‑based transformations and low‑rank compensation with GPTQ can improve performance, while finer granularity and asymmetric quantization benefit activations more than weights. The study highlights the importance of understanding component interactions and the impact of scaling factor formats on low‑bit quantization performance.

By Yutong Liu, Cairong Zhao, Guosheng Hu
arXiv AI
6d ago

RAQ-MLA: Role-Aware Quantization for Multi-Head Latent Attention Caches

RAQ-MLA introduces a role-aware quantization scheme for Multi-Head Latent Attention (MLA) caches used in large language models. It analyzes the distinct functions of the cached latent and positional key tensors, applying tailored invertible transforms to each based on their impact on attention output. The method achieves near-lossless performance while reducing the cache size to about 2.5 bits per element, effectively increasing theoretical KV-cache capacity by 6.5×.

By Tianqi Chen, Xunchao Li, Linchuan Xie, Guanghua Yu, Jianchen Zhu, Peisong Wang, Jian Cheng