Two-Stage Grid Optimization for Group-wise Quantization of LLMs

Abstract: Group-wise quantization is an effective strategy for mitigating accuracy degradation in low-bit quantization of LLMs. Among existing methods, GPTQ has been widely adopted due to its efficiency; however, it neglects input statistics and inter-group correlations when determining group scales, leading to a mismatch with its goal of minimizing layer-wise reconstruction loss. In this work, we propose a two-stage optimization framework for group scales that explicitly minimizes the layer-wise reconstruction loss. In the first stage, performed prior to GPTQ, we initialize each group scale to minimize the group-wise reconstruction loss, thereby incorporating input statistics. In the second stage, we freeze the integer weights obtained via GPTQ and refine the group scales to minimize the layer-wise reconstruction loss. To this end, we employ the coordinate descent algorithm and derive a closed-form update rule, which enables efficient refinement without costly numerical optimization. Notably, our derivation incorporates the quantization errors from preceding layers to prevent error accumulation. Experimental results demonstrate that our method consistently enhances group-wise quantization, achieving higher accuracy with negligible overhead.