Combining quantization with other optimization techniques
Quantization can be combined with other optimization techniques, such as pruning and knowledge distillation, to create highly efficient models that are suitable for deployment on resource-constrained devices. By leveraging multiple methods, you can significantly reduce model size while maintaining or minimally impacting performance. This is especially useful when deploying LLMs on edge devices or mobile platforms where computational and memory resources are limited.
Pruning and quantization
One of the most effective combinations is pruning followed by quantization. First, pruning removes redundant weights from the model, reducing the number of parameters. Quantization then reduces the precision of the remaining weights, which further decreases the model size and improves inference speed. Here’s an example:
import torch import torch.nn.utils.prune as prune import torch.quantization as quant # Step 1: Prune the...