Where Bits Matter in World Model Planning: A Paired Mixed-Bit Study for Efficient Spatial Reasoning

Abstract: Efficient spatial reasoning requires world models that remain reliable under tight precision budgets. We study whether low-bit planning behavior is determined mostly by total bitwidth or by where bits are allocated across modules. Using DINO-WM on the Wall planning task, we run a paired-goal mixed-bit evaluation across uniform, mixed, asymmetric, and layerwise variants under two planner budgets. We observe a consistent three-regime pattern: 8-bit and 6-bit settings remain close to FP16, 3-bit settings collapse, and 4-bit settings are allocation-sensitive. In that transition region, preserving encoder precision improves planning relative to uniform quantization, and near-size asymmetric variants show the same encoder-side direction. In a later strict 22-cell replication with smaller per-cell episode count, the mixed-versus-uniform INT4 sign becomes budget-conditioned, which further highlights the sensitivity of this transition regime. These findings motivate module-aware, budget-aware quantization policies as a broader research direction for efficient spatial reasoning. Code and run artifacts are available at https://github.com/suraj-ranganath/DINO-MBQuant.