Why it matters

KV quantization halves decode memory. Big win for long-context serving.

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The architecture

Store K, V in INT8/INT4.

Dequantize on read.

Slight quality loss.

KV quantizationQuantize KVINT8 or INT4Dequant on readin kernelTrade-offmemory vs qualityvLLM, TensorRT-LLM support INT8 KV; quality drop is typically < 1 point on eval sets
KV quantization.
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How it works end to end

Per-token scale/zero.

Dequantize in attention.

Enable in vLLM, TRT-LLM.