arXiv:2607.24953cs.LGcs.AI2026-07被引 2

提出2D块量化方法,实现稳定高效的4比特大模型训练。

Stable FP4 Training via Transposition-Invariant Block Quantization

论文配图:Stable FP4 Training via Transposition-Invariant Block Quantization
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 采用二维块量化保证前向与反向计算的缩放一致
  • 70亿参数模型训练后困惑度损失低于1.3%
  • 适合追求高效大模型训练的研究者和工程师

降低训练精度是提升大语言模型训练效率的关键,但将精度推进至4比特浮点(FP4)仍面临优化不稳定的挑战。我们发现现有微缩放方法的根本问题在于张量转置引发的缩放不一致:前向与反向传播对同一数值赋予不同缩放因子,导致梯度更新偏差和不稳定。为此,我们提出基于2D块FP4量化的低精度训练框架,强制实现前向-反向缩放一致性,保持计算一致性。结合无截断缩放与随机舍入,有效控制量化误差并维持无偏梯度。针对注意力机制敏感性,对查询和键投影采用MXFP8量化,形成实用的混合精度设计。我们在最多70亿参数的密集模型及300亿参数的Mixture-of-Experts模型上进行评估,训练数据达1000亿词元。在所有设置下,该方法均实现端到端稳定FP4训练,困惑度与下游准确率接近BF16基线,降幅小于1.3%。结果表明,维持前向-反向缩放一致性足以实现大规模实用化FP4训练,为更高效的大模型训练提供简单有效的路径。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reducing training precision is a key lever for improving the e ciency of large language model (LLM) training, but pushing beyond FP8 to 4-bit oating point (FP4) remains challenging due to instability during optimization. We identify a fundamental source of this instability in existing microscaling approaches: scale inconsistency induced by tensor transposition. In conventional 1D block quantization, forward and backward passes assign di erent scaling factors to the same values after transposition, leading to biased and unstable gradient updates. To address this issue, we propose a low-precision training framework based on 2D block FP4 quantization, which enforces transposition-invariant scaling and preserves consistency between forward and backward computations. We further combine this with truncation-free scaling and stochastic rounding to control quantization error and maintain unbiased gradients. To handle the sensitivity of attention mechanisms, we adopt MXFP8 quantization for query and key projections, yielding a practical mixed-precision design. We evaluate our method on dense LLMs up to 7B parameters and a 30B Mixture-of-Experts model, trained on up to 100B tokens. Across all settings, our approach achieves stable end-to-end FP4 training and closely matches BF16 performance, with less than 1.3% degradation in perplexity and downstream accuracy. These results demonstrate that enforcing forwardbackward scaling consistency is su cient to enable practical FP4 training at scale, providing a simple and e ective pathway toward more e cient LLM training.

FP4训练量化大模型稳定性

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