arXiv:2607.15810cs.LG2026-07

通过双侧量化误差对齐,让低精度推理在MoE大模型强化学习中更稳定高效。

QUADS: Stabilizing NVFP4 Reinforcement Learning for MoE via QUantization-error Alignment across Dual Sides

论文配图:QUADS: Stabilizing NVFP4 Reinforcement Learning for MoE via QUantization-error Alignment across Dual Sides
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 在训练和推理两端分别设计量化对齐机制,解决激活误差放大问题。
  • 相比原始NVFP4,pass@1指标提升21.49分,吞吐量比FP8高16%。
  • 适合追求低精度加速的MoE强化学习研究者与工业部署场景。

Rollout生成是混合专家(MoE)大语言模型强化学习(RL)的主要瓶颈,推动了如FP8等低精度加速方案的发展。新兴的NVFP4格式结合细粒度缩放以保精度,并支持原生W4A4 FP4 GEMMs,较FP8有更高吞吐。然而我们发现,直接将NVFP4用于MoE RL rollout并不实用:采用BF16训练的NVFP4 rollout在约150步后崩溃,伴随滚动生成器与训练器间对数概率差距迅速扩大。通过训练-推理误差分析与受控消融实验,我们确认激活误差而非权重误差是导致FP4 RL不稳定的主因——权重可通过共享量化-反量化路径同步对齐,而激活在线重计算且受粗粒度E2M1网格放大误差。为此,我们提出跨双侧量化误差对齐方法QUADS:在训练端引入非对称量化感知训练(fake-quantize权重),保持激活未量化以增强对齐;在推理端采用残差激活补偿,修正高误差通道,同时保留原生W4A4 GEMMs。在多个基准上的MoE RL实验表明,QUADS达到BF16级精度,平均pass@1提升21.49分,推理吞吐较FP8提高约16%。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Rollout generation is a major bottleneck in Reinforcement Learning (RL) for Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) Large Language Models, motivating low-precision rollout acceleration such as FP8. As an emerging low-precision format, NVFP4 combines fine-grained scaling for accuracy preservation with native W4A4 FP4 GEMMs for higher throughput than FP8. However, we find that directly applying NVFP4 to MoE RL rollout is impractical. NVFP4 rollout with BF16 training collapses after roughly 150 steps, accompanied by rapidly growing rollout-trainer log-probability gaps. Through training-inference error analysis and controlled ablations, we identify activation error, rather than weight error, as the dominant source of FP4 RL instability: weights can be synchronized and aligned by a shared quantization-dequantization path, whereas activations are recomputed online and error is amplified by the coarse E2M1 grid. Therefore, to stabilize NVFP4 RL for MoE, we propose QUantization-error Alignment across Dual Sides (QUADS). On the trainer side, we introduce Asymmetric Quantization-Aware Training fake-quantizing weights while keeping activations unquantized for better alignment. On the rollout side, Residual Activation Compensation corrects high-error activation channels while preserving native W4A4 GEMMs. In our MoE RL experiments on several benchmarks, QUADS achieves BF16-level accuracy, improves average pass@1 by 21.49 points over naive NVFP4 RL, and delivers ~16% higher rollout throughput than FP8.

强化学习低精度推理MoE量化对齐

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