QWHA: Quantization-Aware Walsh-Hadamard Adaptation for Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning on Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Jeon, Hyesung, Lee, Seojune, Kang, Beomseok, Kim, Yulhwa, Kim, Jae-Joon
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Jeon, Hyesung
Lee, Seojune
Kang, Beomseok
Kim, Yulhwa
Kim, Jae-Joon
author_facet Jeon, Hyesung
Lee, Seojune
Kang, Beomseok
Kim, Yulhwa
Kim, Jae-Joon
contents The demand for efficient deployment of large language models (LLMs) has driven interest in quantization, which reduces inference cost, and parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT), which lowers training overhead. This motivated the development of quantization-aware PEFT to produce accurate yet efficient quantized models. In this setting, reducing quantization error prior to fine-tuning is crucial for achieving high model accuracy. However, existing methods that rely on low-rank adaptation suffer from limited representational capacity. Recent Fourier-related transform (FT)-based adapters offer greater representational power than low-rank adapters, but their direct integration into quantized models often results in ineffective error reduction and increased computational overhead. To overcome these limitations, we propose QWHA, a method that integrates FT-based adapters into quantized models by employing the Walsh-Hadamard Transform (WHT) as the transform kernel, together with a novel adapter initialization scheme incorporating adaptive parameter selection and value refinement. We demonstrate that QWHA effectively mitigates quantization errors while facilitating fine-tuning, and that its design substantially reduces computational cost. Experimental results show that QWHA consistently outperforms baselines in low-bit quantization accuracy and achieves significant training speedups over existing FT-based adapters. The code is available at https://github.com/vantaa89/qwha.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_17428
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle QWHA: Quantization-Aware Walsh-Hadamard Adaptation for Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning on Large Language Models
Jeon, Hyesung
Lee, Seojune
Kang, Beomseok
Kim, Yulhwa
Kim, Jae-Joon
Computation and Language
The demand for efficient deployment of large language models (LLMs) has driven interest in quantization, which reduces inference cost, and parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT), which lowers training overhead. This motivated the development of quantization-aware PEFT to produce accurate yet efficient quantized models. In this setting, reducing quantization error prior to fine-tuning is crucial for achieving high model accuracy. However, existing methods that rely on low-rank adaptation suffer from limited representational capacity. Recent Fourier-related transform (FT)-based adapters offer greater representational power than low-rank adapters, but their direct integration into quantized models often results in ineffective error reduction and increased computational overhead. To overcome these limitations, we propose QWHA, a method that integrates FT-based adapters into quantized models by employing the Walsh-Hadamard Transform (WHT) as the transform kernel, together with a novel adapter initialization scheme incorporating adaptive parameter selection and value refinement. We demonstrate that QWHA effectively mitigates quantization errors while facilitating fine-tuning, and that its design substantially reduces computational cost. Experimental results show that QWHA consistently outperforms baselines in low-bit quantization accuracy and achieves significant training speedups over existing FT-based adapters. The code is available at https://github.com/vantaa89/qwha.
title QWHA: Quantization-Aware Walsh-Hadamard Adaptation for Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning on Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17428