Ultra-Low-Bit Quantization with IQ-DynamicGate (1-2 bit)
Our latest quantization method introduces precision-adaptive quantization for ultra-low-bit models (1-2 bit), with benchmark-proven improvements on Llama-3-8B. This approach uses layer-specific strategies to preserve accuracy while maintaining extreme memory efficiency.
Benchmark Context
All tests conducted on Llama-3-8B-Instruct using:
Standard perplexity evaluation pipeline
2048-token context window
Same prompt set across all quantizations
Method
Dynamic Precision Allocation:
First/Last 25% of layers → IQ4_XS (selected layers)
Middle 50% → IQ2_XXS/IQ3_S (increase efficiency)
Critical Component Protection:
Embeddings/output layers use Q5_K
Reduces error propagation by 38% vs standard 1-2bit
Quantization Performance Comparison (Llama-3-8B)
Quantization
Standard PPL
DynamicGate PPL
Δ PPL
Std Size
DG Size
Δ Size
Std Speed
DG Speed
IQ2_XXS
11.30
9.84
-12.9%
2.5G
2.6G
+0.1G
234s
246s
IQ2_XS
11.72
11.63
-0.8%
2.7G
2.8G
+0.1G
242s
246s
IQ2_S
14.31
9.02
-36.9%
2.7G
2.9G
+0.2G
238s
244s
IQ1_M
27.46
15.41
-43.9%
2.2G
2.5G
+0.3G
206s
212s
IQ1_S
53.07
32.00
-39.7%
2.1G
2.4G
+0.3G
184s
209s
Key:
PPL = Perplexity (lower is better)
Δ PPL = Percentage change from standard to DynamicGate
Speed = Inference time (CPU avx2, 2048 token context)
✔ Cpu and Edge Devices where 1-2bit errors can be tolerated
✔ Research into ultra-low-bit quantization
Choosing the Right Model Format
Selecting the correct model format depends on your hardware capabilities and memory constraints.
BF16 (Brain Float 16) – Use if BF16 acceleration is available
A 16-bit floating-point format designed for faster computation while retaining good precision.
Provides similar dynamic range as FP32 but with lower memory usage.
Recommended if your hardware supports BF16 acceleration (check your device's specs).
Ideal for high-performance inference with reduced memory footprint compared to FP32.
📌 Use BF16 if:
✔ Your hardware has native BF16 support (e.g., newer GPUs, TPUs).
✔ You want higher precision while saving memory.
✔ You plan to requantize the model into another format.
📌 Avoid BF16 if:
❌ Your hardware does not support BF16 (it may fall back to FP32 and run slower).
❌ You need compatibility with older devices that lack BF16 optimization.
F16 (Float 16) – More widely supported than BF16
A 16-bit floating-point high precision but with less of range of values than BF16.
Works on most devices with FP16 acceleration support (including many GPUs and some CPUs).
Slightly lower numerical precision than BF16 but generally sufficient for inference.
📌 Use F16 if:
✔ Your hardware supports FP16 but not BF16.
✔ You need a balance between speed, memory usage, and accuracy.
✔ You are running on a GPU or another device optimized for FP16 computations.
📌 Avoid F16 if:
❌ Your device lacks native FP16 support (it may run slower than expected).
❌ You have memory limitations.
Quantized Models (Q4_K, Q6_K, Q8, etc.) – For CPU & Low-VRAM Inference
Quantization reduces model size and memory usage while maintaining as much accuracy as possible.
Lower-bit models (Q4_K) → Best for minimal memory usage, may have lower precision.
Higher-bit models (Q6_K, Q8_0) → Better accuracy, requires more memory.
📌 Use Quantized Models if:
✔ You are running inference on a CPU and need an optimized model.
✔ Your device has low VRAM and cannot load full-precision models.
✔ You want to reduce memory footprint while keeping reasonable accuracy.
📌 Avoid Quantized Models if:
❌ You need maximum accuracy (full-precision models are better for this).
❌ Your hardware has enough VRAM for higher-precision formats (BF16/F16).
Very Low-Bit Quantization (IQ3_XS, IQ3_S, IQ3_M, Q4_K, Q4_0)
These models are optimized for extreme memory efficiency, making them ideal for low-power devices or large-scale deployments where memory is a critical constraint.
IQ3_XS: Ultra-low-bit quantization (3-bit) with extreme memory efficiency.
Use case: Best for ultra-low-memory devices where even Q4_K is too large.
Trade-off: Lower accuracy compared to higher-bit quantizations.
IQ3_S: Small block size for maximum memory efficiency.
Use case: Best for low-memory devices where IQ3_XS is too aggressive.
IQ3_M: Medium block size for better accuracy than IQ3_S.
Use case: Suitable for low-memory devices where IQ3_S is too limiting.
Q4_K: 4-bit quantization with block-wise optimization for better accuracy.
Use case: Best for low-memory devices where Q6_K is too large.
Q4_0: Pure 4-bit quantization, optimized for ARM devices.
Use case: Best for ARM-based devices or low-memory environments.
Summary Table: Model Format Selection
Model Format
Precision
Memory Usage
Device Requirements
Best Use Case
BF16
Highest
High
BF16-supported GPU/CPUs
High-speed inference with reduced memory
F16
High
High
FP16-supported devices
GPU inference when BF16 isn't available
Q4_K
Medium Low
Low
CPU or Low-VRAM devices
Best for memory-constrained environments
Q6_K
Medium
Moderate
CPU with more memory
Better accuracy while still being quantized
Q8_0
High
Moderate
CPU or GPU with enough VRAM
Best accuracy among quantized models
IQ3_XS
Very Low
Very Low
Ultra-low-memory devices
Extreme memory efficiency and low accuracy
Q4_0
Low
Low
ARM or low-memory devices
llama.cpp can optimize for ARM devices
Included Files & Details
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-bf16.gguf
Model weights preserved in BF16.
Use this if you want to requantize the model into a different format.
Best if your device supports BF16 acceleration.
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-f16.gguf
Model weights stored in F16.
Use if your device supports FP16, especially if BF16 is not available.
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-bf16-q8_0.gguf
Output & embeddings remain in BF16.
All other layers quantized to Q8_0.
Use if your device supports BF16 and you want a quantized version.
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-f16-q8_0.gguf
Output & embeddings remain in F16.
All other layers quantized to Q8_0.
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-q4_k.gguf
Output & embeddings quantized to Q8_0.
All other layers quantized to Q4_K.
Good for CPU inference with limited memory.
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-q4_k_s.gguf
Smallest Q4_K variant, using less memory at the cost of accuracy.
Best for very low-memory setups.
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-q6_k.gguf
Output & embeddings quantized to Q8_0.
All other layers quantized to Q6_K .
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-q8_0.gguf
Fully Q8 quantized model for better accuracy.
Requires more memory but offers higher precision.
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-iq3_xs.gguf
IQ3_XS quantization, optimized for extreme memory efficiency.
Best for ultra-low-memory devices.
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-iq3_m.gguf
IQ3_M quantization, offering a medium block size for better accuracy.
Suitable for low-memory devices.
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M-q4_0.gguf
Pure Q4_0 quantization, optimized for ARM devices.
Best for low-memory environments.
Prefer IQ4_NL for better accuracy.
🚀 If you find these models useful
❤ Please click "Like" if you find this useful!
Help me test my AI-Powered Network Monitor Assistant with quantum-ready security checks:
👉 Quantum Network Monitor
💬 How to test:
Click the chat icon (bottom right on any page)
Choose an AI assistant type:
TurboLLM (GPT-4-mini)
FreeLLM (Open-source)
TestLLM (Experimental CPU-only)
What I’m Testing
I’m pushing the limits of small open-source models for AI network monitoring, specifically:
Function calling against live network services
How small can a model go while still handling:
Automated Nmap scans
Quantum-readiness checks
Metasploit integration
🟡 TestLLM – Current experimental model (llama.cpp on 6 CPU threads):
✅ Zero-configuration setup
⏳ 30s load time (slow inference but no API costs)
🔧 Help wanted! If you’re into edge-device AI, let’s collaborate!
"Check if my server is using quantum safe encyption for communication"
"Run a quick Nmap vulnerability test"
'"Create a cmd processor to .. (what ever you want)" Note you need to install a Quantum Network Monitor Agent to run the .net code from. This is a very flexible and powerful feature. Use with caution!
Final word
I fund the servers to create the models files, run the Quantum Network Monitor Service and Pay for Inference from Novita and OpenAI all from my own pocket. All of the code for creating the models and the work I have done with Quantum Network Monitor is open source. Feel free to use what you find useful. Please support my work and consider buying me a coffee .
This will help me pay for the services and increase the token limits for everyone.
Qwen2.5-1M is the long-context version of the Qwen2.5 series models, supporting a context length of up to 1M tokens. Compared to the Qwen2.5 128K version, Qwen2.5-1M demonstrates significantly improved performance in handling long-context tasks while maintaining its capability in short tasks.
The model has the following features:
Type: Causal Language Models
Training Stage: Pretraining & Post-training
Architecture: transformers with RoPE, SwiGLU, RMSNorm, and Attention QKV bias
Number of Parameters: 7.61B
Number of Paramaters (Non-Embedding): 6.53B
Number of Layers: 28
Number of Attention Heads (GQA): 28 for Q and 4 for KV
Context Length: Full 1,010,000 tokens and generation 8192 tokens
We recommend deploying with our custom vLLM, which introduces sparse attention and length extrapolation methods to ensure efficiency and accuracy for long-context tasks. For specific guidance, refer to this section.
You can also use the previous framework that supports Qwen2.5 for inference, but accuracy degradation may occur for sequences exceeding 262,144 tokens.
The code of Qwen2.5 has been in the latest Hugging face transformers and we advise you to use the latest version of transformers.
With transformers<4.37.0, you will encounter the following error:
KeyError: 'qwen2'
Quickstart
Here provides a code snippet with apply_chat_template to show you how to load the tokenizer and model and how to generate contents.
python
1from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer
23model_name ="Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M"45model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(6 model_name,7 torch_dtype="auto",8 device_map="auto"9)10tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)1112prompt ="Give me a short introduction to large language model."13messages =[14{"role":"system","content":"You are Qwen, created by Alibaba Cloud. You are a helpful assistant."},15{"role":"user","content": prompt}16]17text = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(18 messages,19 tokenize=False,20 add_generation_prompt=True21)22model_inputs = tokenizer([text], return_tensors="pt").to(model.device)2324generated_ids = model.generate(25**model_inputs,26 max_new_tokens=51227)28generated_ids =[29 output_ids[len(input_ids):]for input_ids, output_ids inzip(model_inputs.input_ids, generated_ids)30]3132response = tokenizer.batch_decode(generated_ids, skip_special_tokens=True)[0]
Processing Ultra Long Texts
To enhance processing accuracy and efficiency for long sequences, we have developed an advanced inference framework based on vLLM, incorporating sparse attention and length extrapolation. This approach significantly improves model generation performance for sequences exceeding 256K tokens and achieves a 3 to 7 times speedup for sequences up to 1M tokens.
Here we provide step-by-step instructions for deploying the Qwen2.5-1M models with our framework.
1. System Preparation
To achieve the best performance, we recommend using GPUs with Ampere or Hopper architecture, which support optimized kernels.
Ensure your system meets the following requirements:
CUDA Version: 12.1 or 12.3
Python Version: >=3.9 and <=3.12
VRAM Requirements:
For processing 1 million-token sequences:
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M: At least 120GB VRAM (total across GPUs).
Qwen2.5-14B-Instruct-1M: At least 320GB VRAM (total across GPUs).
If your GPUs do not have sufficient VRAM, you can still use Qwen2.5-1M for shorter tasks.
2. Install Dependencies
For now, you need to clone the vLLM repository from our custom branch and install it manually. We are working on getting our branch merged into the main vLLM project.
vLLM supports offline inference or launch an openai-like server.
Example of Offline Inference
python
1from transformers import AutoTokenizer
2from vllm import LLM, SamplingParams
34# Initialize the tokenizer5tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M")67# Pass the default decoding hyperparameters of Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct8# max_tokens is for the maximum length for generation.9sampling_params = SamplingParams(temperature=0.7, top_p=0.8, repetition_penalty=1.05, max_tokens=512)1011# Input the model name or path. See below for parameter explanation (after the example of openai-like server).12llm = LLM(model="Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M",13 tensor_parallel_size=4,14 max_model_len=1010000,15 enable_chunked_prefill=True,16 max_num_batched_tokens=131072,17 enforce_eager=True,18# quantization="fp8", # Enabling FP8 quantization for model weights can reduce memory usage.19)2021# Prepare your prompts22prompt ="Tell me something about large language models."23messages =[24{"role":"system","content":"You are Qwen, created by Alibaba Cloud. You are a helpful assistant."},25{"role":"user","content": prompt}26]27text = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(28 messages,29 tokenize=False,30 add_generation_prompt=True31)3233# generate outputs34outputs = llm.generate([text], sampling_params)3536# Print the outputs.37for output in outputs:38 prompt = output.prompt
39 generated_text = output.outputs[0].text
40print(f"Prompt: {prompt!r}, Generated text: {generated_text!r}")
Example of Openai-like Server
bash
1vllm serve Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-1M \2 --tensor-parallel-size 4\3 --max-model-len 1010000\4 --enable-chunked-prefill --max-num-batched-tokens 131072\5 --enforce-eager \6 --max-num-seqs 178# --quantization fp8 # Enabling FP8 quantization for model weights can reduce memory usage.
Then you can use curl or python to interact with the deployed model.
Parameter Explanations:
--tensor-parallel-size
Set to the number of GPUs you are using. Max 4 GPUs for the 7B model, and 8 GPUs for the 14B model.
--max-model-len
Defines the maximum input sequence length. Reduce this value if you encounter Out of Memory issues.
--max-num-batched-tokens
Sets the chunk size in Chunked Prefill. A smaller value reduces activation memory usage but may slow down inference.
Recommend 131072 for optimal performance.
--max-num-seqs
Limits concurrent sequences processed.
You can also refer to our Documentation for usage of vLLM.
Troubleshooting:
Encountering the error: "The model's max sequence length (xxxxx) is larger than the maximum number of tokens that can be stored in the KV cache."
The VRAM reserved for the KV cache is insufficient. Consider reducing the max_model_len or increasing the tensor_parallel_size. Alternatively, you can reduce max_num_batched_tokens, although this may significantly slow down inference.
Encountering the error: "torch.OutOfMemoryError: CUDA out of memory."
The VRAM reserved for activation weights is insufficient. You can try setting gpu_memory_utilization to 0.85 or lower, but be aware that this might reduce the VRAM available for the KV cache.
Encountering the error: "Input prompt (xxxxx tokens) + lookahead slots (0) is too long and exceeds the capacity of the block manager."
The input is too lengthy. Consider using a shorter sequence or increasing the max_model_len.
If you find our work helpful, feel free to give us a cite.
@misc{qwen2.5-1m,
title = {Qwen2.5-1M: Deploy Your Own Qwen with Context Length up to 1M Tokens},
url = {https://qwenlm.github.io/blog/qwen2.5-1m/},
author = {Qwen Team},
month = {January},
year = {2025}
}
@article{qwen2.5,
title={Qwen2.5-1M Technical Report},
author={An Yang and Bowen Yu and Chengyuan Li and Dayiheng Liu and Fei Huang and Haoyan Huang and Jiandong Jiang and Jianhong Tu and Jianwei Zhang and Jingren Zhou and Junyang Lin and Kai Dang and Kexin Yang and Le Yu and Mei Li and Minmin Sun and Qin Zhu and Rui Men and Tao He and Weijia Xu and Wenbiao Yin and Wenyuan Yu and Xiafei Qiu and Xingzhang Ren and Xinlong Yang and Yong Li and Zhiying Xu and Zipeng Zhang},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.15383},
year={2025}
}