README.md

Training with Quantization Noise for Extreme Model Compression ({Fan*, Stock*} et al., 2020)

This page contains information for how to train and quantize models with Quantization Noise, for both scalar quantization like int8 and Iterative Product Quantization. Check out our paper here.

Looking for pretrained models? They will be added shortly. Looking for code to train vision models? We are working on open sourcing our code as part of ClassyVision. Please check back, but note that both the Scalar and Iterative Product Quantization counterparts of the nn.Conv2d module are already included in this release.

Contents:

• Walk through of code
• Reproduce NLP Results
• Reproduce Vision Results

Citation

@article{fan2020training,
    title={Training with Quantization Noise for Extreme Model Compression},
    author={Angela Fan* and Pierre Stock* and and Benjamin Graham and Edouard Grave and Remi Gribonval and Herve Jegou and Armand Joulin},
    year={2020},
    eprint={2004.07320},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    primaryClass={cs.ML}
}

Walk through the code

Training a model with Quant-Noise improves the performance in subsequent inference-time quantization by training models to be robust to quantization. This technique is useful for both scalar and product quantization methods, as well as multiple domains. We detail below our approach to train, quantize models and integrate our code to quantize your favorite models.

Scalar Quantization

Unlike the section Iterative Product Quantization which gives state-of-the-art compression, this section showcases the usefulness of our approach for simple scalar quantization baselines such as int8 using on-GPU Fake Quantization.

Training

Scalar quantization with Quant-Noise consists in randomly quantizing a proportion p of the weights during training. Scalar quantization is implemented here under the form of Fake Quantization, meaning that we emulate int8 on GPU by quantizing and de-quantizing both the weights and the activations. We rely on PyTorch's quantization primitives.

To train a model with Quant-Noise, add the following flag:

--quant-noise-scalar 0.5

Large values of noise make the network easier to quantize but may result in higher non-quantized test and validation perplexities.

Quantization

When evaluating a network, all quantized modules and activation hooks automatically switch to p=1 so the validation accuracy reported by Fairseq is actually the quantized one, nothing more to do.

Integration with your own code

Looking to quantize your own models with Quant-Noise + Scalar Quantization?

• Use the function quantize_model_ implemented here to (1) replace all your modules by their quantized counterparts and (2) add hooks to those modules to quantize the activations.
• Then, perform your training as usual. Note that in eval() mode, the network is always fully quantized (weights and activations) by default (p=1).

Iterative Product Quantization

Iterative Product Quantization with Quant-Noise proceeds in two steps. First, a model must be trained uncompressed with Quant-Noise. Second, the model must be quantized with iPQ. Note that we implement here the simplest form of noise, which consists in randomly dropping a proportion p of blocks, and that worked as well as assigning those blocks to their current centroid.

Training

To train a model with Quant-Noise, add the following flags:

--quant-noise-pq 0.1 --quant-noise-pq-block-size 8

quant-noise-pq controls how much dropout is applied to the blocks of the weight matrix. quant-noise-pq-block-size controls the size of the weight matrix blocks. We recommend training with 0.05 to 0.2 Quant-Noise, a value that worked well in our experiments. For the block-size, we recommend training with block-size of 8. Note that the block size must be a multiple of input_features, see the size checks here. Large block sizes result in higher compression ratio but may induce a loss in accuracy.

We currently support training Transformer based models, such as sequence-to-sequence, language models, and BERT architectures. The quant_noise function here wraps a module. It splits a weight matrix into blocks and applies random dropout to these blocks. In the Transformer architectures, quant-noise is applied to the input and output embeddings, the attention, and the FFN.

Quant-Noise can also be combined with LayerDrop (see here) to add its pruning effect to the quantized model and make the model even smaller. We recommend training with LayerDrop 0.1 or 0.2.

Quantization

We implement an improved version of product quantization from Stock et al, iPQ, described here, see code with old API here. Note that we improved the iPQ API in terms of both compute speed and usability as described below.

For the particular case of PQ, quantization is made sequentially. We recommend first quantizing the FFNs, then the EMBs, and finally the ATTNs. Quantization is done in two sub-steps:

• First, perform n steps of Product Quantization (generally n=20 is enough).
• Then, finetune the obtained centroids.

Integration with your own code

Looking to quantize your own models with Quant-Noise + iPQ?

• First wrap your modules with the quant_noise function here, which is module-agnostic and train your favorite model.
• Then, quantize your trained model using the code here. This can be done without any changes to your training loop. Below is an example code for integration. Note that we tried our approach only on Transformers and various Convolutional Models such as EfficientNets.

from fairseq.modules.quantization.pq import quantize_model_, SizeTracker

# get configuration parameters
n_centroids_config = config["n_centroids"]
block_sizes_config = config["block_sizes"]
layers_to_quantize = config["layers_to_quantize"]

# size tracker for keeping track of assignments, centroids and non-compressed sizes
size_tracker = SizeTracker(model)

# Quantize model by stages
for step in range(len(layers_to_quantize)):

    # quantize model in-place
    quantized_layers = quantize_model_(
        model,
        size_tracker,
        layers_to_quantize,
        block_sizes_config,
        n_centroids_config,
        step=step,
    )
    logger.info(f"Finetuning stage {step}, quantized layers: {quantized_layers}")
    logger.info(f"{size_tracker}")

    # Don't forget to re-create/update trainer/optimizer since model parameters have changed
    optimizer = ...

    # Finetune the centroids with your usual training loop for a few epochs
    trainer.train_epoch()

Looking to reproduce the NLP results in the paper?

We detail below how to reproduce the state-of-the-art results in reported in the paper for Quant-Noise + Iterative Product Quantization.

Training with Quant-Noise

To train RoBERTa + QuantNoise, we followed this setting here. The following command can be used to train a RoBERTa Base + QuantNoise model:

TOTAL_UPDATES=125000
WARMUP_UPDATES=10000
PEAK_LR=0.0005
TOKENS_PER_SAMPLE=512
MAX_POSITIONS=512
MAX_SENTENCES=16
UPDATE_FREQ=2
DATA_DIR=/path/to/data/here

fairseq-train $DATA_DIR \
    --task masked_lm --criterion masked_lm --arch roberta_base \
    --sample-break-mode complete \
    --tokens-per-sample $TOKENS_PER_SAMPLE --max-positions $MAX_POSITIONS \
    --optimizer adam --adam-betas '(0.9, 0.98)' --adam-eps 1e-6 \
    --clip-norm 0.0 \
    --lr-scheduler polynomial_decay --lr $PEAK_LR \
    --warmup-updates $WARMUP_UPDATES --total-num-update $TOTAL_UPDATES \
    --dropout 0.1 --attention-dropout 0.1 \
    --weight-decay 0.01 \
    --batch-size $MAX_SENTENCES \
    --update-freq $UPDATE_FREQ --max-update $TOTAL_UPDATES \
    --save-dir checkpoint/roberta \
    --ddp-backend no_c10d --encoder-layerdrop 0.2 \
    --quant-noise-pq 0.2 --quant-noise-pq-block-size 8 --untie-weights-roberta

To finetune RoBERTa + QuantNoise, we followed this setting here. The following command can be used to finetune a RoBERTa Base + QuantNoise model on the RTE dataset:

TOTAL_NUM_UPDATES=2036
WARMUP_UPDATES=122
LR=2e-05
NUM_CLASSES=2
MAX_SENTENCES=16
ROBERTA_PATH=/path/to/roberta_quantnoise/model.pt

fairseq-train /path/to/rte/data/ \
    --restore-file $ROBERTA_PATH \
    --max-positions 512 \
    --batch-size $MAX_SENTENCES \
    --max-tokens 4400 \
    --task sentence_prediction \
    --reset-optimizer --reset-dataloader --reset-meters \
    --required-batch-size-multiple 1 \
    --init-token 0 --separator-token 2 \
    --arch roberta_large \
    --criterion sentence_prediction \
    --num-classes $NUM_CLASSES \
    --dropout 0.1 --attention-dropout 0.1 \
    --weight-decay 0.1 --optimizer adam --adam-betas "(0.9, 0.98)" --adam-eps 1e-06 \
    --clip-norm 0.0 \
    --lr-scheduler polynomial_decay --lr $LR --total-num-update $TOTAL_NUM_UPDATES --warmup-updates $WARMUP_UPDATES \
    --fp16 --fp16-init-scale 4 --threshold-loss-scale 1 --fp16-scale-window 128 \
    --max-epoch 10 \
    --find-unused-parameters \
    --best-checkpoint-metric accuracy --maximize-best-checkpoint-metric \
    --ddp-backend no_c10d \
    --quant-noise-pq 0.2 --quant-noise-pq-block-size 8

To train Language Models on Wikitext-103, we followed this setting here. The following command can be used to train a Transformer + QuantNoise model on Wikitext-103:

fairseq-train --task language_modeling /path/to/wikitext-103/data \
    --save-dir checkpoints/transformer_wikitext-103 \
    --adaptive-input --adaptive-input-cutoff 20000,60000 --adaptive-input-factor 4 \
    --adaptive-softmax-cutoff 20000,60000 --adaptive-softmax-dropout 0.2 --adaptive-softmax-factor 4.0 \
    --tie-adaptive-proj --tie-adaptive-weights \
    --arch transformer_lm_gbw \
    --attention-dropout 0.1 --dropout 0.2 --relu-dropout 0.1 \
    --clip-norm 0.1 --criterion adaptive_loss \
    --ddp-backend no_c10d \
    --decoder-attention-heads 8 --decoder-embed-dim 1024 --decoder-ffn-embed-dim 4096 --decoder-input-dim 1024 \
    --decoder-layers 16 --decoder-normalize-before --decoder-output-dim 1024 \
    --min-lr 0.0001 --lr-period-updates 270000 --lr-scheduler cosine --lr-shrink 0.75 --lr 1.0 --t-mult 2.0 \
    --max-tokens 3072 --tokens-per-sample 3072 --momentum 0.99 --optimizer nag \
    --sample-break-mode none --update-freq 3 \
    --warmup-init-lr 1e-07 --warmup-updates 16000 \
    --weight-decay 0 --seed 1 --stop-min-lr 1e-09 \
    --quant-noise-pq 0.05 --quant-noise-pq-block-size 8

To evaluate this model, note you need to use the eval.py script. The following command can be used to evaluate:

fairseq-eval-lm /path/to/wikitext-103/data --path /path/to/model/checkpoint \
    --sample-break-mode complete \
    --max-tokens 3072 \
    --context-window 2560 \
    --softmax-batch 1024 \
    --gen-subset valid

and change the --gen-subset to test if you would like to evaluate on the test set instead.

Iterative Product Quantization

To quantize the finetuned RoBERTa model, we use this command on 1 GPU. This should run in a day.

TOTAL_NUM_UPDATES=6108  # 2036 updates for each iteration
WARMUP_UPDATES=122
LR=2e-05
NUM_CLASSES=2
MAX_SENTENCES=16
fairseq-train --task sentence_prediction /path/to/data/ \
    --restore-file $ROBERTA_PATH \
    --save-dir checkpoints/roberta_finetuned \
    --max-positions 512 \
    --batch-size $MAX_SENTENCES \
    --max-tokens 4400 \
    --init-token 0 --separator-token 2 \
    --arch roberta_large \
    --criterion sentence_prediction \
    --num-classes $NUM_CLASSES \
    --dropout 0.1 --attention-dropout 0.1 \
    --weight-decay 0.1 --optimizer adam --adam-betas "(0.9, 0.98)" --adam-eps 1e-06 \
    --clip-norm 0.0 --lr-scheduler polynomial_decay \
    --fp16 --fp16-init-scale 4 --threshold-loss-scale 1 --fp16-scale-window 128 \
    --no-progress-bar --skip-invalid-size-inputs-valid-test --ddp-backend no_c10d \
    --quantization-config-path /path/to/config/yaml

To quantize the trained Language Model, we use this command on 8 V100 23GB GPUs. This should run in a couple of hours.

fairseq-train --task language_modeling /path/to/wikitext-103/data \
    --save-dir checkpoints/transformer_wikitext-103 \
    --adaptive-input --adaptive-input-cutoff 20000,60000 --adaptive-input-factor 4 \
    --adaptive-softmax-cutoff 20000,60000 --adaptive-softmax-dropout 0.2 --adaptive-softmax-factor 4.0 \
    --arch transformer_lm_gbw \
    --attention-dropout 0.1 --dropout 0.2 --relu-dropout 0.1  \
    --bucket-cap-mb 25 --char-embedder-highway-layers 2 --character-embedding-dim 4 \
    --clip-norm 0.1 --criterion adaptive_loss \
    --ddp-backend no_c10d \
    --decoder-attention-heads 8 --decoder-embed-dim 1024 --decoder-ffn-embed-dim 4096 --decoder-input-dim 1024 --decoder-layers 16 --decoder-normalize-before --decoder-output-dim 1024 \
    --fp16 --keep-last-epochs -1 \
    --min-lr 0.0001 --lr-period-updates 270000 --lr-scheduler cosine --lr-shrink 0.75 --lr 0.05 --stop-min-lr 1e-09 \
    --max-tokens 2944  --tokens-per-sample 2944\
    --momentum 0.99 --no-epoch-checkpoints --no-progress-bar --optimizer nag --required-batch-size-multiple 8 \
    --sample-break-mode none --t-mult 2.0 --skip-invalid-size-inputs-valid-test \
    --tie-adaptive-proj --tie-adaptive-weights --update-freq 3 --weight-decay 0 --seed 1  \
    --log-interval 100 --no-progress-bar --skip-invalid-size-inputs-valid-test \
    --restore-file path/to/trained/lm/with/quant/noise \
    --max-update 13500 --quantization-config-path /path/to/config/yaml

If you have less capacity or if your distributed training freezes, try reducing --max-tokens and --tokens-per-sample (this may reduce the quantized accuracy a bit).

Remarks

We try to keep the open-sourced code as readable and as easy-to-plug as possible. Therefore, we did not test it for the following cases:

• Scalar quantization with RoBERTa.
• Quantization with iPQ and int8 combined.

If you have trouble adapting it, we will be more than happy to help!

Looking to reproduce the Vision results in the paper?

We are working on open sourcing our code as part of ClassyVision. Please check back.

Having an issue or have a question?

Please open an issue in this repository with the details of your question. Thanks!