Zero-Shot Dynamic Quantization for Transformer Inference

We introduce a novel run-time method for significantly reducing the accuracy loss associated with quantizing BERT-like models to 8-bit integers. Existing methods for quantizing models either modify the training procedure,or they require an additional calibration step to adjust parameters that also requires a selected held-out dataset. Our method permits taking advantage of quantization without the need for these adjustments. We present results on several NLP tasks demonstrating the usefulness of this technique.

Optimal Mini-Batch Size Selection for Fast Gradient Descent

This paper presents a methodology for selecting the mini-batch size that minimizes Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) learning time for single and multiple learner problems. By decoupling algorithmic analysis issues from hardware and software implementation details, we reveal a robust empirical inverse law between mini-batch size and the average number of SGD updates required to converge to a specified error threshold. Combining this empirical inverse law with measured system performance, we create an accurate, closed-form model of average training time and show how this model can be used to identify quantifiable implications for both algorithmic and hardware aspects of machine learning. We demonstrate the inverse law empirically, on both image recognition (MNIST, CIFAR10 and CIFAR100) and machine translation (Europarl) tasks, and provide a theoretic justification via proving a novel bound on mini-batch SGD training.

Pieces of Eight: 8-bit Neural Machine Translation

Neural machine translation has achieved levels of fluency and adequacy that would have been surprising a short time ago. Output quality is extremely relevant for industry purposes, however it is equally important to produce results in the shortest time possible, mainly for latency-sensitive applications and to control cloud hosting costs. In this paper we show the effectiveness of translating with 8-bit quantization for models that have been trained using 32-bit floating point values. Results show that 8-bit translation makes a non-negligible impact in terms of speed with no degradation in accuracy and adequacy.