提出单低秩补偿方法,让4比特大模型推理更准更快
SERQ: Saliency-Aware Low-Rank Error Reconstruction for LLM Quantization
- 用单一低秩矩阵修复权重和激活的量化误差
- 在W4A4下比现有方法高1.8%准确率,且无需中间量化
- 适合部署到边缘设备的低精度大模型推理
后训练量化(PTQ)已成为在边缘设备和服务器平台高效部署大语言模型的关键技术。现有方法多通过缓解通道级异常激活带来的量化误差(如预量化缩放、在线变换或低秩误差重建)来降低权重与激活精度。其中,基于低秩适配(LoRA)的误差重建效果显著,因其引入轻量辅助计算路径,无需复杂优化或额外在线层。然而,此前研究发现其在W4A4设置下存在严重精度下降,且传统低秩适配需两阶段分解,推理时需中间量化,限制了低精度效率。本文提出SERQ,一种面向低比特大模型推理的显著性感知误差重建方法,采用单个低秩补偿矩阵。SERQ通过三阶段策略——静态激活展平、显著性感知误差重建、离线权重重排——在保持线性层4比特矩阵乘法高效性的前提下,联合缓解由激活与权重显著性引发的量化误差。该方法仅在低秩误差重建阶段增加少量计算,其余操作均离线完成,显著降低延迟开销。实验表明,SERQ在W4A8与W4A4设置下均优于现有误差重建方法,且在W4A4下超过最先进的旋转基方法,在大幅降低校准复杂度的同时实现更高精度。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Post-training quantization (PTQ) has emerged as a prevailing technique for deploying large language models (LLMs) efficiently in terms of both memory and computation, across edge devices and server platforms. Existing PTQ methods primarily aim to reduce precision in weights and activations by mitigating quantization errors caused by channel-wise outlier activations (e.g., pre-quantization scaling, online transformations, or low-rank error reconstruction). Among these approaches, error reconstruction with low-rank adaptation (LoRA) has proven particularly effective, as it introduces a lightweight auxiliary computation path without requiring heavy optimization or additional online layers. However, prior studies reveal severe accuracy degradation under W4A4 settings, and conventional low-rank adaptations rely on two sequential factors, necessitating intermediate quantization during inference and thereby limiting low-precision efficiency. In this work, we propose SERQ, a saliency-aware error reconstruction method for low-bit LLM inference that employs a single low-rank compensation matrix. SERQ preserves efficient 4-bit matrix multiplication in linear layers by jointly mitigating quantization errors arising from both activation and weight saliency through three stages: (1) static activation flattening, (2) saliency-aware error reconstruction, and (3) offline weight permutation. The method incurs additional computation only for low-rank error reconstruction via a single decomposition, while all other operations are performed offline, thereby keeping latency overhead minimal. Empirically, SERQ outperforms prior error reconstruction methods under both W4A8 and W4A4 settings, and achieves higher accuracy than state-of-the-art rotation-based W4A4 approaches, while substantially reducing calibration complexity.
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