NVIDIA / NVIDIA/TransformerEngine

Question regarding the 2D weight quantization and quality degradation in 1D case

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Description

Many thanks for the great work!

In the paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.20853 they use 1D weight quantization with requantization with success, and also from their repo https://github.com/thu-ml/TetraJet-MXFP4Training/issues/2#issuecomment-3454394125 the author mentioned from their experience 1D weight quantization produce better result than 2D weight quantization.

So I was wondering how did you implement the 1D weight quantization (in the transpose dimension in bwd) in your paper that produces worse result compared to 2D case? Did you also use requantization (i.e. quantize then dequantize then transpose then quantize) in 1D weight quantization?

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Research direction

No source file, test, or entry point is named. Start by reading the referenced paper and the linked TetraJet-MXFP4Training issue comment, then trace TransformerEngine's 1D and 2D weight-quantization paths to determine whether requantization is used; done means documenting the implementation details and explaining the reported quality difference.

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Assessment

Tech stack
python, pytorch
Domain
machine-learning
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

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