Nonlinear Bipolar Compensation: Handling Outliers in Post-Training Quantization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sun, Peilin, Wu, Jianxin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Sun, Peilin
Wu, Jianxin
author_facet Sun, Peilin
Wu, Jianxin
contents Network quantization has emerged as one of the most practical model compression techniques, which significantly reduces a model's memory and compute consumption by mapping floating-point numbers to low-bit representations. However, existing quantization methods typically suffer from the speed-accuracy tradeoff and limited generalization. To address these issues, recent compensation-based methods offer an efficient yet general solution by introducing additional lightweight linear layers into the quantized network. However, the accuracy of these methods suffers from their limited compensation capability and high sensitivity to outliers. In this paper, we propose Nonlinear Bipolar Compensation (NBC), a post-training quantization approach that introduces nonlinear compensation to reduce the effect of outliers. We further design Bipolar Logarithmic Transformation (BLT), which compresses outliers by mapping both the quantized input and the quantization error into a transformed space. A simple linear layer is then applied for compensation in the transformed space, preserving the efficiency of our method. Extensive experiments across various tasks, models, and quantization methods confirm the effectiveness, efficiency, robustness, and generality of our NBC approach.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_16423
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nonlinear Bipolar Compensation: Handling Outliers in Post-Training Quantization
Sun, Peilin
Wu, Jianxin
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Network quantization has emerged as one of the most practical model compression techniques, which significantly reduces a model's memory and compute consumption by mapping floating-point numbers to low-bit representations. However, existing quantization methods typically suffer from the speed-accuracy tradeoff and limited generalization. To address these issues, recent compensation-based methods offer an efficient yet general solution by introducing additional lightweight linear layers into the quantized network. However, the accuracy of these methods suffers from their limited compensation capability and high sensitivity to outliers. In this paper, we propose Nonlinear Bipolar Compensation (NBC), a post-training quantization approach that introduces nonlinear compensation to reduce the effect of outliers. We further design Bipolar Logarithmic Transformation (BLT), which compresses outliers by mapping both the quantized input and the quantization error into a transformed space. A simple linear layer is then applied for compensation in the transformed space, preserving the efficiency of our method. Extensive experiments across various tasks, models, and quantization methods confirm the effectiveness, efficiency, robustness, and generality of our NBC approach.
title Nonlinear Bipolar Compensation: Handling Outliers in Post-Training Quantization
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.16423