arXiv:2604.07888cs.LG2026-04ACL被引 3

提出渐进式量化方法,让低比特大模型训练更稳定高效。

Bit-by-Bit: Progressive QAT Strategy with Outlier Channel Splitting for Stable Low-Bit LLMs

论文配图:Bit-by-Bit: Progressive QAT Strategy with Outlier Channel Splitting for Stable Low-Bit LLMs
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 分块逐步降低精度,避免训练发散
  • 2比特下比基线损失仅高2.25点(WikiText2 PPL)
  • 支持单模型多比特部署,适合边缘设备

超低精度训练大语言模型仍面临巨大挑战。直接低比特量化训练常因收敛不稳和量化噪声累积导致成本高昂,尤其受重尾异常通道影响显著。为此,我们提出Bit-by-Bit,一种具有异常通道分离的渐进式量化训练框架。该方法包含三部分:(1) 分块渐进训练,逐级降低精度,确保低比特优化的稳定初始化;(2) 整数量化网格嵌套结构,实现“训练一次、任意部署”范式,单一模型可支持多比特无需重训;(3) 有意识的异常通道分离,抑制量化误差同时保持输出恒等性。此外,采用微缩放组与E4M3格式,动态适配激活范围,符合OCP/NVIDIA标准。针对2比特算子效率问题,开发了适用于W2A2与W2A16的定制算子,在该配置下相较BF16最高提速11倍。在Llama2/3上,相比BitDistiller与EfficientQAT等基线,其在W2A2设置下的损失仅比全精度模型高2.25个WikiText2 PPL。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Training LLMs at ultra-low precision remains a formidable challenge. Direct low-bit QAT often suffers from convergence instability and substantial training costs, exacerbated by quantization noise from heavy-tailed outlier channels and error accumulation across layers. To address these issues, we present Bit-by-Bit, a progressive QAT framework with outlier channel splitting. Our approach integrates three key components: (1) block-wise progressive training that reduces precision stage by stage, ensuring stable initialization for low-bit optimization; (2) nested structure of integer quantization grids to enable a "train once, deploy any precision" paradigm, allowing a single model to support multiple bit-widths without retraining; (3) rounding-aware outlier channel splitting, which mitigates quantization error while acting as an identity transform that preserves the quantized outputs. Furthermore, we follow microscaling groups with E4M3 scales, capturing dynamic activation ranges in alignment with OCP/NVIDIA standards. To address the lack of efficient 2-bit kernels, we developed custom operators for both W2A2 and W2A16 configurations, achieving up to 11$\times$ speedup over BF16. Under W2A2 settings, Bit-by-Bit significantly outperforms baselines like BitDistiller and EfficientQAT on both Llama2/3, achieving a loss of only 2.25 WikiText2 PPL compared to full-precision models.

量化大模型低比特训练加速

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