arXiv:2511.05898cs.CVcs.AI2025-11

解决低比特量化中特征融合梯度失衡问题,提升目标检测与分割性能。

Q$^2$: Quantization-Aware Gradient Balancing and Attention Alignment for Low-Bit Quantization

  • 提出动态梯度平衡机制,缓解量化误差导致的梯度失衡。
  • 在目标检测上平均提升2.5% mAP,图像分割提升3.7% mDICE。
  • 无需推理开销,可无缝集成到现有量化训练流程中。

量化感知训练(QAT)在分类网络的低比特(≤4比特)量化中已取得显著成果。然而,在目标检测和图像分割等复杂视觉任务中,性能仍存在明显下降。本文从新视角重新审视该现象,发现关键失败因素在于:特征融合阶段由累积量化误差引发的梯度失衡,这会扭曲优化路径并阻碍收敛。基于此诊断,提出Q²框架,包含两项核心设计:(1) 量化感知梯度平衡融合(Q-GBFusion),一种闭环机制,动态调节特征融合过程中的梯度贡献;(2) 量化感知注意力分布对齐(Q-ADA),一种无参监督策略,利用语义相关性和量化敏感性重构监督分布,提供更稳定可靠的训练信号。大量实验表明,该方法作为即插即用的通用策略,可融入多种先进QAT流程,在目标检测上平均提升2.5% mAP,图像分割提升3.7% mDICE。其仅作用于训练阶段,不引入推理开销,极具实际部署价值。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Quantization-aware training (QAT) has achieved remarkable success in low-bit ($\leq$4-bit) quantization for classification networks. However, when applied to more complex visual tasks such as object detection and image segmentation, performance still suffers significant degradation. A key cause of this limitation has been largely overlooked in the literature. In this work, we revisit this phenomenon from a new perspective and identify a major failure factor: gradient imbalance at feature fusion stages, induced by accumulated quantization errors. This imbalance biases the optimization trajectory and impedes convergence under low-bit quantization. Based on this diagnosis, we propose Q$^2$, a two-pronged framework comprising: (1) Quantization-aware Gradient Balancing Fusion (Q-GBFusion), a closed-loop mechanism that dynamically rebalances gradient contributions during feature fusion; and (2) Quantization-aware Attention Distribution Alignment (Q-ADA), a parameter-free supervision strategy that reconstructs the supervision distribution using semantic relevance and quantization sensitivity, yielding more stable and reliable supervision to stabilize training and accelerate convergence. Extensive experiments show that our method, as a plug-and-play and general strategy, can be integrated into various state-of-the-art QAT pipelines, achieving an average +2.5\% mAP gain on object detection and a +3.7\% mDICE improvement on image segmentation. Notably, it is applied only during training and introduces no inference-time overhead, making it highly practical for real-world deployment.

量化目标检测图像分割梯度平衡

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