As Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT, LLaMA, and DeepSeek reach hundreds of billions of parameters, the demand for high-speed, low-cost inference has skyrocketed. Quantization is a technique that helps drastically reduces model size and computational requirements by using lower-precision numbers. In this blog, we will discuss quantization and why it is essential.
This is the next blog in the blog series on LLMs and Inference. In the previous blog on LLMs and Inference, we discussed about the safetensors format for LLMs. In this blog, we will walk through a critical step for LLM Inference.
Compiling a Large Language Model (LLM) generally refers to optimizing the model’s computational graph and kernel execution to improve inference or training performance on specific hardware (like GPUs or TPUs). Think of this as the next logical step that is performed after loading a model.
As Large Language Models (LLMs) like LLaMA, Mistral, and DeepSeek continue to scale into the hundreds of billions of parameters, model efficiency becomes as important as model quality.
One often-overlooked bottleneck is the model loading format. This is one of the primary focus areas for safetensors.
