Quantization Meets Reasoning: Exploring LLM Low-Bit Quantization Degradation for Mathematical Reasoning

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Li, Zhen, Su, Yupeng, Yang, Runming, Xie, Congkai, Wang, Zheng, Xie, Zhongwei, Wong, Ngai, Yang, Hongxia
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Li, Zhen
Su, Yupeng
Yang, Runming
Xie, Congkai
Wang, Zheng
Xie, Zhongwei
Wong, Ngai
Yang, Hongxia
author_facet Li, Zhen
Su, Yupeng
Yang, Runming
Xie, Congkai
Wang, Zheng
Xie, Zhongwei
Wong, Ngai
Yang, Hongxia
contents Large language models have achieved significant advancements in complex mathematical reasoning benchmarks, such as MATH. However, their substantial computational requirements present challenges for practical deployment. Model quantization has emerged as an effective strategy to reduce memory usage and computational costs by employing lower precision and bit-width representations. In this study, we systematically evaluate the impact of quantization on mathematical reasoning tasks. Our results demonstrate that aggressive quantization methods like AWQ and GPTQ introduce up to 32.39% accuracy degradation (average 11.31%) on Llama-3 models, particularly in numerical computation and reasoning planning. To address this, we introduce a multidimensional evaluation framework combining qualitative capability analysis and quantitative error assessment. We further develop targeted recovery strategies, showing that fine-tuning quantized models on only 545 task-specific examples for 3 minutes on 4 GPUs effectively restores reasoning capabilities to near full-precision levels. Additionally, our error assessment pipeline achieves 98.9% accuracy in diagnosing and localizing errors across 3,366 failure cases, providing actionable insights for mitigating quantization-induced degradation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_03035
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Quantization Meets Reasoning: Exploring LLM Low-Bit Quantization Degradation for Mathematical Reasoning
Li, Zhen
Su, Yupeng
Yang, Runming
Xie, Congkai
Wang, Zheng
Xie, Zhongwei
Wong, Ngai
Yang, Hongxia
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Large language models have achieved significant advancements in complex mathematical reasoning benchmarks, such as MATH. However, their substantial computational requirements present challenges for practical deployment. Model quantization has emerged as an effective strategy to reduce memory usage and computational costs by employing lower precision and bit-width representations. In this study, we systematically evaluate the impact of quantization on mathematical reasoning tasks. Our results demonstrate that aggressive quantization methods like AWQ and GPTQ introduce up to 32.39% accuracy degradation (average 11.31%) on Llama-3 models, particularly in numerical computation and reasoning planning. To address this, we introduce a multidimensional evaluation framework combining qualitative capability analysis and quantitative error assessment. We further develop targeted recovery strategies, showing that fine-tuning quantized models on only 545 task-specific examples for 3 minutes on 4 GPUs effectively restores reasoning capabilities to near full-precision levels. Additionally, our error assessment pipeline achieves 98.9% accuracy in diagnosing and localizing errors across 3,366 failure cases, providing actionable insights for mitigating quantization-induced degradation.
title Quantization Meets Reasoning: Exploring LLM Low-Bit Quantization Degradation for Mathematical Reasoning
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03035