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REAL-Q: E2E LLM Quantization via Dynamic Gradient Descent

arxiv.org/abs/2609.00049

quality89

Updated 2 h ago · first seen 11 Sept 2026

paper_01M294FSJKWM7WNBRNTP9HC3CR

Published
11 Sept 2026
T1 · 2 h ago
arXiv
2609.00049
T1 · 2 h ago
Category
cs.LG
T1 · 2 h ago

Abstract

Post-training quantization (PTQ) is essential for deploying large language models (LLMs) under strict resource constraints. State-of-the-art PTQ methods quantize each layer with a single closed-form second-order solver: to remain analytically tractable, they heavily approximate the global loss (dropping cross-channel coupling, pooling output rows into groups), and they then freeze the resulting Hessian across the entire layer, with no way to refresh it as the loss landscape shifts column by column--a phenomenon we call information misalignment. We propose REAL-Q (Real-time E2E-loss Aligned LLM Quantization), a novel PTQ paradigm that breaks this compromise: instead of diluting the objective for the sake of analytic tractability, REAL-Q targets an end-to-end-aligned surrogate of the global loss and refines it via fine-grained, dynamic Block-wise Gradient Descent applied after every column block (128 columns). By coupling this fine-grained correction with a sliding window mechanism for smooth cross-layer transitions, REAL-Q effectively mitigates error propagation across the network. On LLaMA-3.1 (8B and 70B) and Qwen3 (0.6B-32B) at W4A16, REAL-Q reduces end-to-end KL divergence by up to ~49% relative to state-of-the-art globally-guided methods.

Authors 12

Qian Zhang, Yaoming Li, Zhewen Tan, Yanshu Wang, Heng Lu, Kun Su, Zongwei Lv, Wenhan Yu, Yongge Ma, Yinjun Han, Ruikang Liu, Tong Yang

Specification

Official page

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh

Arxiv announce type
replace

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh

arXiv id
2609.00049

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh

Categories
cs.LG, cs.AI

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh

PDF

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh

Primary category
cs.LG

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh

Published
11 Sept 2026

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh

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Provenance

Attributed facts

9

Source tiers

T19

Freshest observation

2 h ago

Conflicts

None