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

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2405.14917v2
• Date: Sun, 25 May 2025 08:58:37 GMT
• Title: SliM-LLM: Salience-Driven Mixed-Precision Quantization for Large Language Models
• Authors: Wei Huang, Haotong Qin, Yangdong Liu, Yawei Li, Qinshuo Liu, Xianglong Liu, Luca Benini, Michele Magno, Shiming Zhang, Xiaojuan Qi,
• Abstract summary: Post-training quantization (PTQ) is an effective technique for compressing large language models (LLMs)<n>We propose SliM-LLM, a salience-driven mixed-precision quantization framework that allocates bit-widths at the group-wise.<n> Experiments show that SliM-LLM achieves superior performance across various LLMs at low bit-widths.
• Score: 63.118592279833656
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: 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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