Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) rely on long reasoning traces, making inference expensive. While low-bit quantization reduces per-token decoding cost, we show that aggressive 2-bit inference can fail to deliver end-to-end speedup because instability in the generation process inflates total token count.
arXiv:2609.26708v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Quantization-aware distillation (QAD) restores much of the short-form question-answering performance lost to sub-3-bit quantization, yet leaves mathema...
By Yuanteng Chen, Zhilei Liu, Peisong Wang, Yuantian Shao, Chuangyi Li, Weining Wang, Shuang Qiu, Gang Li, Jing Liu, Jian Cheng
arXiv:2606. 15682v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) achieve strong problem-solving through long chain-of-thought, but their deployment is constrained by the high cost of full-precision inference and growing KV cache footprints.
By Janghwan Lee, Sihwa Lee, Jinseok Kim, Yongjik Kim, Jieun Lim, Jinwook Oh, Jungwook Choi
arXiv:2606. 25519v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Quantization is widely used to reduce the inference cost of large language models, but its effect on reasoning models is not fully captured by final-answer accuracy or per-token latency.
By Xinyu Lian, Walid Krichene, Beichen Huang, Masahiro Tanaka, Olatunji Ruwase, Li Zhang, Minjia Zhang
The paper introduces RATIO, a framework for improving quantized reasoning models by identifying overthinking tokens and applying token-specific penalties. It uses Quantization-aware Reasoning Behavior Analysis to detect problematic tokens and Token-Specific Penalty Determination to assign penalties without extra training. Experiments show RATIO outperforms existing methods, boosting accuracy by up to 9.8 points and shortening chain-of-thought length by up to 51.3%.
By Chengzhu Bao, Xianglong Yan, Tianao Zhang, Jiaqi Chen, Shaoqiu Zhang, Yulun Zhang
TRACES (Tagging Reasoning Steps for Adaptive Cost‑Efficient Early‑Stopping) is a lightweight framework that tags reasoning steps of large‑language models in real time, enabling adaptive, cost‑efficient early stopping during inference. By monitoring the types of steps generated, the method identifies when models shift their reasoning after arriving at a correct answer, allowing for interpretable stopping criteria. Experiments on mathematical reasoning benchmarks (MATH500, GSM8K, AIME) and knowledge benchmarks (MMLU, GPQA) show token reductions of 20–50% while preserving accuracy, with more conservative thresholds needed for harder tasks such as BeyondAIME and IMO AnswerBench.
By Yannis Belkhiter, Seshu Tirupathi, Giulio Zizzo, John D. Kelleher