FedQuad: Adaptive Layer-wise LoRA Deployment and Activation Quantization for Federated Fine-Tuning

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Hauptverfasser: Li, Rukuo, Liu, Jianchun, Xu, Hongli, Huang, Liusheng
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Li, Rukuo
Liu, Jianchun
Xu, Hongli
Huang, Liusheng
author_facet Li, Rukuo
Liu, Jianchun
Xu, Hongli
Huang, Liusheng
contents Federated fine-tuning (FedFT) provides an effective paradigm for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) in privacy-sensitive scenarios. However, practical deployment remains challenging due to the limited resources on end devices. Existing methods typically utilize parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) techniques, such as Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), to substantially reduce communication overhead. Nevertheless, significant memory usage for activation storage and computational demands from full backpropagation remain major barriers to efficient deployment on resource-constrained end devices. Moreover, substantial resource heterogeneity across devices results in severe synchronization bottlenecks, diminishing the overall fine-tuning efficiency. To address these issues, we propose FedQuad, a novel LoRA-based FedFT framework that adaptively adjusts the LoRA depth (the number of consecutive tunable LoRA layers from the output) according to device computational capabilities, while employing activation quantization to reduce memory overhead, thereby enabling efficient deployment on resource-constrained devices. Specifically, FedQuad first identifies the feasible and efficient combinations of LoRA depth and the number of activation quantization layers based on device-specific resource constraints. Subsequently, FedQuad employs a greedy strategy to select the optimal configurations for each device, effectively accommodating system heterogeneity. Extensive experiments demonstrate that FedQuad achieves a 1.4-5.3x convergence acceleration compared to state-of-the-art baselines when reaching target accuracy, highlighting its efficiency and deployability in resource-constrained and heterogeneous end-device environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_01001
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle FedQuad: Adaptive Layer-wise LoRA Deployment and Activation Quantization for Federated Fine-Tuning
Li, Rukuo
Liu, Jianchun
Xu, Hongli
Huang, Liusheng
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Federated fine-tuning (FedFT) provides an effective paradigm for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) in privacy-sensitive scenarios. However, practical deployment remains challenging due to the limited resources on end devices. Existing methods typically utilize parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) techniques, such as Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), to substantially reduce communication overhead. Nevertheless, significant memory usage for activation storage and computational demands from full backpropagation remain major barriers to efficient deployment on resource-constrained end devices. Moreover, substantial resource heterogeneity across devices results in severe synchronization bottlenecks, diminishing the overall fine-tuning efficiency. To address these issues, we propose FedQuad, a novel LoRA-based FedFT framework that adaptively adjusts the LoRA depth (the number of consecutive tunable LoRA layers from the output) according to device computational capabilities, while employing activation quantization to reduce memory overhead, thereby enabling efficient deployment on resource-constrained devices. Specifically, FedQuad first identifies the feasible and efficient combinations of LoRA depth and the number of activation quantization layers based on device-specific resource constraints. Subsequently, FedQuad employs a greedy strategy to select the optimal configurations for each device, effectively accommodating system heterogeneity. Extensive experiments demonstrate that FedQuad achieves a 1.4-5.3x convergence acceleration compared to state-of-the-art baselines when reaching target accuracy, highlighting its efficiency and deployability in resource-constrained and heterogeneous end-device environments.
title FedQuad: Adaptive Layer-wise LoRA Deployment and Activation Quantization for Federated Fine-Tuning
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01001