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EMNLP Findings2025

FlexQuant: A Flexible and Efficient Dynamic Precision Switching Framework for LLM Quantization

Fangxin Liu, Zongwu Wang, JinHong Xia, Junping Zhao, Shouren Zhao, Jinjin Li, Jian Liu, Li Jiang, Haibing Guan

Abstract

The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) has exacerbated the memory bottleneck due to the widening gap between model parameter scaling and hardware capabilities. While post-training quantization techniques effectively reduce memory overhead, existing methods predominantly rely on static quantization strategies, which struggle to adapt to dynamic workloads. To address this, we propose FlexQuant, a dynamic precision-switching framework that optimizes the trade-off between inference speed and accuracy. Leveraging model perplexity entropy and Kullback-Leibler divergence, FlexQuant enables fine-grained, layer-wise mixed-precision quantization and dynamically adjusts bit-widths during each token generation. FlexQuant provides a comprehensive analysis of quantization strategies, introduces a precision requirement model for optimal switching, and implements efficient fine-grained precision management. Evaluations demonstrate that FlexQuant achieves a 1.3× end-to-end speedup across diverse language tasks with negligible accuracy loss introduced. This framework offers a flexible and adaptive solution for efficient LLM deployment. Code is released at https://github. com/ZongwuWang/FlexQuant.git.

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Cited by top-tier papers1

  1. P3\mathrm{P}^{3}-LLM: An Integrated NPU-PIM Accelerator for Edge LLM Inference Using Hybrid Numerical FormatsYuzong Chen, Chao Fang, Xilai Dai, Yuheng Wu et al.ISCA 2026 · 4 citations

Builds on12

  1. SmoothQuant: Accurate and Efficient Post-Training Quantization for Large Language ModelsGuangxuan Xiao, Ji Lin, Mickaël Seznec, Hao Wu et al.ICML 2023 · 1,493 citations
  2. A Simple and Effective Pruning Approach for Large Language ModelsMingjie Sun, Zhuang Liu, Anna Bair, J. Zico KolterICLR 2024 · 794 citations
  3. SqueezeLLM: Dense-and-Sparse QuantizationSehoon Kim, Coleman Hooper, Amir Gholami, Zhen Dong et al.ICML 2024 · 306 citations
  4. QuIP#: Even Better LLM Quantization with Hadamard Incoherence and Lattice CodebooksAlbert Tseng, Jerry Chee, Qingyao Sun, Volodymyr Kuleshov et al.ICML 2024 · 295 citations
  5. Extreme Compression of Large Language Models via Additive QuantizationVage Egiazarian, Andrei Panferov, Denis Kuznedelev, Elias Frantar et al.ICML 2024 · 187 citations

Related papers

  1. SliM-LLM: Salience-Driven Mixed-Precision Quantization for Large Language ModelsWei Huang, Haotong Qin, Yangdong Liu, Yawei Li et al.ICML 2025
  2. FlexLLM: Token-Level Co-Serving of LLM Inference and Finetuning with SLO GuaranteesGabriele Oliaro, Xupeng Miao, Xinhao Cheng, Vineeth Kada et al.NSDI 2026
  3. GANQ: GPU-Adaptive Non-Uniform Quantization for Large Language ModelsPengxiang Zhao, Xiaoming YuanICML 2025
  4. OTARo: Once Tuning for All Precisions Toward Robust On-Device LLMsShaoyuan Chen, Zhixuan Chen, Dawei Yang, Zhihang Yuan et al.AAAI 2026
  5. SKIM: Any-bit Quantization Pushing The Limits of Post-Training QuantizationRunsheng Bai, Bo Liu, Qiang LiuICML 2025
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