Scheduling Weight Transitions for Quantization-Aware Training

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lee, Junghyup, Jeon, Jeimin, Kim, Dohyung, Ham, Bumsub
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Lee, Junghyup
Jeon, Jeimin
Kim, Dohyung
Ham, Bumsub
author_facet Lee, Junghyup
Jeon, Jeimin
Kim, Dohyung
Ham, Bumsub
contents Quantization-aware training (QAT) simulates a quantization process during training to lower bit-precision of weights/activations. It learns quantized weights indirectly by updating latent weights,i.e., full-precision inputs to a quantizer, using gradient-based optimizers. We claim that coupling a user-defined learning rate (LR) with these optimizers is sub-optimal for QAT. Quantized weights transit discrete levels of a quantizer, only if corresponding latent weights pass transition points, where the quantizer changes discrete states. This suggests that the changes of quantized weights are affected by both the LR for latent weights and their distributions. It is thus difficult to control the degree of changes for quantized weights by scheduling the LR manually. We conjecture that the degree of parameter changes in QAT is related to the number of quantized weights transiting discrete levels. Based on this, we introduce a transition rate (TR) scheduling technique that controls the number of transitions of quantized weights explicitly. Instead of scheduling a LR for latent weights, we schedule a target TR of quantized weights, and update the latent weights with a novel transition-adaptive LR (TALR), enabling considering the degree of changes for the quantized weights during QAT. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on standard benchmarks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_19248
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Scheduling Weight Transitions for Quantization-Aware Training
Lee, Junghyup
Jeon, Jeimin
Kim, Dohyung
Ham, Bumsub
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Quantization-aware training (QAT) simulates a quantization process during training to lower bit-precision of weights/activations. It learns quantized weights indirectly by updating latent weights,i.e., full-precision inputs to a quantizer, using gradient-based optimizers. We claim that coupling a user-defined learning rate (LR) with these optimizers is sub-optimal for QAT. Quantized weights transit discrete levels of a quantizer, only if corresponding latent weights pass transition points, where the quantizer changes discrete states. This suggests that the changes of quantized weights are affected by both the LR for latent weights and their distributions. It is thus difficult to control the degree of changes for quantized weights by scheduling the LR manually. We conjecture that the degree of parameter changes in QAT is related to the number of quantized weights transiting discrete levels. Based on this, we introduce a transition rate (TR) scheduling technique that controls the number of transitions of quantized weights explicitly. Instead of scheduling a LR for latent weights, we schedule a target TR of quantized weights, and update the latent weights with a novel transition-adaptive LR (TALR), enabling considering the degree of changes for the quantized weights during QAT. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on standard benchmarks.
title Scheduling Weight Transitions for Quantization-Aware Training
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.19248