Australian National University

Amanda Kau

#### **A novel compression technique ensuring comparable performance with 70% less parameters**

<figure>
<img
src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*fsdifj_PYjGh5n6m" />
<figcaption>Image generated with Google’s Gemini, 16
May 2024.</figcaption>
</figure>

### Author

- Amanda Kau (**ORCID**:
  [0009--0004--4949--9284](https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4949-9284))

### Introduction

The sizes of large language models (LLMs) have been steadily increasing
over the last few years. OpenAI's GPT-1 started off with 117 million
parameters, which increased to 1.5 billion in GPT-2, and then 175
billion in GPT-3.5. The most recent GPT-4 was rumoured to have over a
trillion parameters. We cannot deny that the natural language abilities
of LLMs have also skyrocketed with their numbers of parameters, but this
is clearly an unsustainable path to stay on. Training GPT-3 resulted in
100 million dollars in electricity bills alone, and the costs of
training models are expected to double every ten months.

Previous compression methods have been proposed for LLMs, such as
quantisation and knowledge distillation, which we will briefly introduce
in this article. However, they have been met with mixed success since
controlling the error that they bring about via compression is
challenging. Instead, a novel technique, **CompactifAI**, has just been
announced with amazing results that we will review.

### Large Language Model Compression

Several compression techniques that have been proposed over the years
are listed out here:

- **Quantization**: Quantization maps a larger set of values (such as
  continuous infinite numbers) to a smaller set of values (like discrete
  finite numbers). In LLMs, parameters in the form of 32-bit
  floating-point (\`float32\`) numbers are typically reduced to
  \`float16\` or \`int8\`. [Hugging
  Face](https://huggingface.co/docs/optimum/en/concept_guides/quantization)
  has a good explanation to quantization if you are interested.
- **Knowledge Distillation:** Knowledge distillation focuses on training
  smaller, simpler models (known as student models) to mimic the
  predictions of larger, more complex models (referred to as teacher
  models). This approach is helpful if we want to achieve better
  performance from larger models without the computational or
  memory costs.
- **Pruning:** Unimportant connections within neural networks are
  identified and pruned to reduce the number of parameters.

These methods can sometimes be brute-force and reduce the number of
neurons at the cost of model performance. Instead, the method proposed
in CompactifAI focuses on controlled and interpretable compression.

### CompactifAI

Inspired by the Tensor Networks commonly used in quantum physics and the
successful decomposition of weight matrices into Matrix Product
Operators (MPOs) in deep learning architectures, CompactifAI similarly
decomposes weight matrices in LLMs into MPOs.

If these terms seem completely alien to you, don't worry. These concepts
originate from quantum physics, hence why they may seem convoluted.
Tensors and MPOs are concepts in mathematics and physics that are used
in deep learning and quantum computing. We will provide a brief
introduction to them in the following section, but feel free to skip
ahead to the Methods or Results sections.

### Tensors and Matrix Product Operators (MPOs)

The easiest way to understand tensors is through an image, like the one
below. Tensors can be visualised as stacks of matrices. RGB images are
represented as 3-dimensional tensors, and a series of RGB images (like
frames in a video) form a 4-dimensional tensor.

Matrix Product Operators (MPOs) are used in quantum mechanics to express
entities like Hamiltonians. They are capable of representing any
operator or function. Think of them as a matrix containing matrices.
**By using MPOs, a larger matrix can be decomposed into a series of
smaller matrices, and the level of compression can be controlled
explicitly via the bond dimension χ.**

<figure>
<img
src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*cZutJyafKf8LVPaZ" />
<figcaption>An explanation of tensors.</figcaption>
</figure>

### The CompactifAI Method

To compress LLMs, a series of steps were used in CompactifAI:

- **Layer sensitivity profiling**: Viable self-attention (SA) and
  multi-layer perceptron (MLP) layers were identified for compression.
- **Compression**: The weights of identified layers were replaced with
  tensor networks, where the level of compression was controlled via the
  bond dimension χ.
- **Healing**: This is a rapid retraining phase, since earlier
  compression did not take into account the effects of other layers.

The retraining step in the "healing" phase is quick, as we will see in
the next section, due to the smaller number of parameters, and could be
completed in less than one epoch without compromising performance.

### The Results

The CompactifAI method was evaluated using the Llama-2 7B model
([HugginFace](https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Llama-2-7b)). The
original model was compared to 8-bit and 4-bit quantized versions of
Llama-2, a float-16 quantized version with CompactifAI applied (88%
version), and a mixed version. The mixed version applied 4-bit
quantization to the non-tensorised layers of the 88% version.

<figure>
<img
src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*RHvcjJFpXTxuaYOW" />
<figcaption>The original Llama-2 7B model was compared with both
quantised and compressed versions of Llama-2. It is evident that the
compressed models (88% and 93%) have a higher level of compression than
quantised models (8-bit and 4-bit). Source: Tomut et al. (2024), <a
href="https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2401.14109">https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2401.14109</a></figcaption>
</figure>

The compressed versions were compared with the original Llama-2 model on
three factors:

1.  **Performance Accuracy**

<figure>
<img
src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*9o7d2LcW01ixt3g_" />
<figcaption>Comparison of performance accuracy of the original Llama-2
model with quantized (8-bit and 4-bit) and compressed (88% compressed
and 93% compressed) versions. Source: Tomut et al. (2024), <a
href="https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2401.14109">https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2401.14109</a></figcaption>
</figure>

Despite having 70% fewer parameters, both compressed models experienced
only a 2% to 3% drop in performance accuracy compared to the original
model. This was observed across five benchmarks for language
understanding (MMLU), commonsense reasoning (HellaSwag), reading
comprehension (BoolQ), world knowledge (TriviaQA), and maths (GSM8K).

**2. Training Time**

As mentioned earlier, the compressed models also train twice as fast as
both the original and quantized models on the same amount of data.

<figure>
<img
src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*CV7njBMDWG8osmF3" />
<figcaption>Comparison of training time of the original Llama-2 model
with quantized (8-bit and 4-bit) and compressed (88% compressed and 93%
compressed) versions. Source: Tomut et al. (2024), <a
href="https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2401.14109">https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2401.14109</a></figcaption>
</figure>

3\. **Inference Time**

Furthermore, the compressed versions experienced a speedup in inference
time as they completed inference tasks in 75% of the time taken by the
other models.

<figure>
<img
src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*RQpXX9C99Je7jTtB" />
<figcaption>Comparison of inference time of the original Llama-2 model
with quantised (8-bit and 4-bit) and compressed (88% compressed and 93%
compressed) versions. Inference times were normalised with respect to
the original model. Source: Tomut et al. (2024), <a
href="https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2401.14109">https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2401.14109</a></figcaption>
</figure>

### Conclusion

The results from this novel technique by Tomut et al. (2024) present a
different reality to what we have previously believed. They show that
LLMs do not have to get larger to get better. Instead, they can perform
just as well with just a fraction of the parameters. Moreover, the
article also presented a novel compression technique that, unlike
previous methods, is controllable and explainable.

With the growing prevalence of LLMs across applications and domains,
there is no doubt there will be more research into this topic as the
world moves toward developing more sustainable LLMs.

### References

- Tomut, A., Jahromi, S. S., Sarkar, A., Kurt, U., Singh, S., Ishtiaq,
  F., Muñoz, C., Bajaj, P. S., Elborady, A., del Bimbo, G., Alizadeh,
  M., Montero, D., Martin-Ramiro, P., Ibrahim, M., Alaoui, O. T.,
  Malcolm, J., Mugel, S., & Orus, R. (2024). CompactifAI: Extreme
  Compression of Large Language Models using Quantum-Inspired Tensor
  Networks (Version 2). arXiv.
  <https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2401.14109>
- Venkatesh, B. (2021, January 19). What is the tensor in deep
  learning?. Medium.
  <https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/what-is-the-tensor-in-deep-learning-77c2af7224a1>
- Xu, X., Li, M., Tao, C., Shen, T., Cheng, R., Li, J., Xu, C., Tao, D.,
  & Zhou, T. (2024). A Survey on Knowledge Distillation of Large
  Language Models (Version 3). arXiv.
  <https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2402.13116>

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<strong>
 A novel compression technique ensuring comparable performance with 70% less parameters
</strong>
Author  Amanda Kau (
<strong>
 ORCID
</strong>
: 0009–0004–4949–9284) Introduction   The sizes of large language models (LLMs) have been steadily increasing over the last few years.

Rogue Scholar Posts

CompactifAI: Large Language Models Don’t Actually Have To Be Large