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SliM-LLM: Salience-Driven Mixed-Precision Quantization for Large Language Models

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arxiv 2405.14917 v2 pith:JWYK2M2L submitted 2024-05-23 cs.LG cs.CL

SliM-LLM: Salience-Driven Mixed-Precision Quantization for Large Language Models

classification cs.LG cs.CL
keywords quantizationslim-llmbit-widthscomparedlanguagelargellmsmethods
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Post-training quantization (PTQ) is an effective technique for compressing large language models (LLMs). However, while uniform-precision quantization is computationally efficient, it often compromises model performance. To address this, we propose SliM-LLM, a salience-driven mixed-precision quantization framework that allocates bit-widths at the group-wise. Our approach leverages the observation that important weights follow a structured distribution and introduces two key components: \textbf{1)} \textit{Salience-Determined Bit Allocation} adaptively assigns bit-widths to groups within each layer based on their salience; and \textbf{2)} \textit{Salience-Weighted Quantizer Calibration} optimizes quantizer parameters by incorporating element-level salience. With its structured partitioning, SliM-LLM provides a hardware-friendly solution that matches the efficiency of uniform quantization methods while improving accuracy. Experiments show that SliM-LLM achieves superior performance across various LLMs at low bit-widths. For example, a 2-bit quantized LLaMA-7B model reduces memory usage by nearly 6x compared to the floating-point baseline, decreases perplexity by 48\% compared to state-of-the-art gradient-free PTQ methods, and maintains GPU inference speed. Additionally, the extended version, SliM-LLM$^+$, which incorporates gradient-based quantization, further reduces perplexity by 35.1\%. Our code is available at https://github.com/Aaronhuang-778/SliM-LLM

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Forward citations

Cited by 11 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. LoopQ: Quantization for Recursive Transformers

    cs.LG 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    LoopQ provides a loop-aware PTQ framework for recursive Transformers that mitigates distribution shift, state reuse, and recursive error accumulation, yielding 68.8% higher average accuracy and 87.7% lower perplexity ...

  2. SpinQuant: LLM quantization with learned rotations

    cs.LG 2024-05 conditional novelty 7.0

    SpinQuant learns optimal rotations to enable accurate 4-bit quantization of LLM weights, activations, and KV cache, reducing the zero-shot gap to full precision to 2.9 points on LLaMA-2 7B.

  3. KronQ: LLM Quantization via Kronecker-Factored Hessian

    cs.LG 2026-07 accept novelty 6.5

    Kronecker-factored Hessian PTQ with bidirectional incoherence and joint-trace mixed precision yields stable 2-bit LLM weights where activation-only methods fail.

  4. Voltron: Enabling Elastic Multi-Device Execution of LLM Inference for Empowered Edge Intelligence

    cs.DC 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    A framework called Voltron elastically distributes LLM inference across heterogeneous edge devices using layer-wise hybrid parallelism and mixed precision, achieving up to 16.5% higher accuracy than single-device exec...

  5. GRINQH: Graded Input-based Quantization Hierarchy for Efficient LLM Generation

    cs.LG 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    GRINQH introduces a graded input-based quantization hierarchy that dynamically assigns multi-precision weights using activation magnitudes as importance proxy, unifying quantization with sparsification to improve LLM ...

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    ActQuant achieves sub-4-bit (down to 2.5 bpw) quantization of VLA models via action-contribution bit allocation and curvature-based scale tuning, retaining over 90% performance on LIBERO and physical robot tasks.

  7. LBLLM: Lightweight Binarization of Large Language Models via Three-Stage Distillation

    cs.LG 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    LBLLM achieves better accuracy than prior binarization methods for LLMs by decoupling weight and activation quantization through initialization, layer-wise distillation, and learnable activation scaling.

  8. When Attention Sink Emerges in Language Models: An Empirical View

    cs.CL 2024-10 accept novelty 6.0

    Attention sinks emerge in language models from softmax-induced token dependence on attention scores and do not appear when using sigmoid attention without normalization in models up to 1B parameters.

  9. The Illusion of Equivalency: Statistical Characterization of Quantization Effects in LLMs

    cs.AI 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0

    Quantized LLMs diverge from their base models at the decision level even when accuracy is preserved, with query and key attention projections showing the greatest structural distortion under low-bit compression.

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    Putri is a structured pruning technique for LLMs that compensates for pruning errors via weight updates and sequential processing while pruning at the attention-head level to reach state-of-the-art results at extreme ...

  11. Attention Sink Forges Native MoE in Attention Layers: Sink-Aware Training to Address Head Collapse

    cs.CL 2026-02 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Attention sinks forge native MoE mechanisms in attention layers that cause head collapse, addressed by sink-aware training with auxiliary load balancing.