Mixed-Precision Quantization
Overview
Mixed-precision quantization studies how to use more bits for parts of a model that are sensitive to numerical error and fewer bits elsewhere, reducing storage and computation while preserving useful behavior. Common approaches include post-training quantization and quantization-aware training, with precision chosen using calibration data, sensitivity measures such as Hessian or KL-based scores, or budgeted search methods such as knapsack optimization and reinforcement learning. The work spans LLM weights and KV caches, mixture-of-experts, diffusion models, and edge devices, and is evaluated on measures such as perplexity, reasoning accuracy, image quality, latency, and energy use. A central challenge is that sensitivity estimates and average bit budgets do not always predict end-to-end quality or real hardware speed, so allocations must be validated against the target workload and device.
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