arXiv:2509.00031cs.LGcs.AI2025-09被引 3

零阶优化实现低资源设备端大模型量化训练,精度高且内存需求极低。

End-to-End On-Device Quantization-Aware Training for LLMs at Inference Cost

  • 用前向梯度估计替代反向传播,避免内存爆炸。
  • 2-4比特下仍能训练130亿参数模型,仅需8GB显存。
  • 可在手机上微调67亿参数模型,适合边缘部署场景。

量化是降低大语言模型(LLMs)部署成本的有效手段,后训练量化(PTQ)因效率高被广泛研究。然而,现有PTQ方法无法微调模型参数,低比特场景下常导致显著精度损失。量化感知训练(QAT)虽更优,但依赖反向传播带来高昂内存开销,限制其在实际部署中的应用。为此,我们提出基于零阶优化的QAT框架ZeroQAT,支持权重量化与激活量化。ZeroQAT通过前向仅梯度估计消除反向传播,大幅降低计算与内存开销,同时保留端到端优化优势。我们还设计了轻量级变体用于量化微调,冻结并预量化大部分参数以进一步减少内存使用。实验表明,ZeroQAT持续优于代表性PTQ和QAT基线,且内存消耗显著更低。例如,可在单张8GB GPU上对130亿参数模型进行2-4比特微调,甚至在一加12手机上完成67亿参数模型的微调,证明其在资源受限边缘设备上的端到端量化训练实用性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Quantization is an effective technique to reduce the deployment cost of large language models (LLMs), and post-training quantization (PTQ) has been widely studied due to its efficiency. However, existing PTQ methods are limited by their inability to fine-tune model parameters and often suffer significant accuracy loss in low-bit scenarios. Quantization-aware training (QAT) provides a more principled solution, but its reliance on backpropagation incurs prohibitive memory costs, limiting its practicality for LLM deployment. To address these challenges, we propose ZeroQAT, a zeroth-order optimization-based QAT framework that supports both weight and activation quantization. ZeroQAT leverages forward-only gradient estimation to eliminate backpropagation, substantially reducing computational and memory overhead while retaining the benefits of end-to-end optimization. We further introduce a lightweight variant of ZeroQAT for quantized fine-tuning, which freezes and pre-quantizes most parameters to further cut memory usage. Experiments show that ZeroQAT consistently outperforms representative PTQ and QAT baselines while requiring significantly less memory. For example, ZeroQAT enables fine-tuning of a 13B model at extremely low bit-widths (e.g., 2-4 bits) on a single 8GB GPU, and even allows fine-tuning a 6.7B model on a OnePlus 12 smartphone, demonstrating its practicality for end-to-end QAT on resource-limited edge devices.

量化大模型边缘计算低内存

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