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T-Mac: CPU Renaissance via Table Lookup for Low-Bit LLM Deployment on Edge (arxiv.org)
2 points by T-A on Aug 17, 2024 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Instead of converting compressed weights back to full numbers before multiplying, it uses tiny lookup tables so each step is just a few additions. It ran up to 4 times faster and used 70% less energy than the standard tool that converts weights first.

Abstract · T-MAC: CPU Renaissance via Table Lookup for Low-Bit LLM Deployment on Edge

The deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs) on edge devices is increasingly important to enhance on-device intelligence. Weight quantization is crucial for reducing the memory footprint of LLMs on devices. However, low-bit LLMs necessitate mixed precision matrix multiplication (mpGEMM) of low precision weights and high precision activations during inference. Existing systems, lacking native support for mpGEMM, resort to dequantize weights for high precision computation. Such an indirect way can lead to a significant inference overhead. In this paper, we introduce T-MAC, an innovative lookup table(LUT)-based method designed for efficient low-bit LLM (i.e., weight-quantized LLM) inference on CPUs. T-MAC directly supports mpGEMM without dequantization, while simultaneously eliminating multiplications and reducing additions required. Specifically, T-MAC transforms the traditional data-type-centric multiplication to bit-wise table lookup, and enables a unified and scalable mpGEMM solution. Our LUT-based kernels scale linearly to the weight bit-width. Evaluated on low-bit Llama and BitNet models, T-MAC demonstrates up to 4x increase in throughput and 70% reduction in energy consumption compared to llama.cpp. For BitNet-b1.58-3B, T-MAC delivers a token generation throughput of 30 tokens/s with a single core and 71 tokens/s with eight cores on M2-Ultra, and 11 tokens/s on lower-end devices like Raspberry Pi 5, which significantly exceeds the adult average reading speed. T-MAC with LUT-based computing paradigm, paves the way for the practical deployment of low-bit LLMs on resource-constrained edge devices without compromising computational efficiency. The system is open-sourced at https://github.com/microsoft/T-MAC .

Jianyu Wei, Shijie Cao, Ting Cao, Lingxiao Ma, Lei Wang, Yanyong Zhang, Mao Yang
arXiv:2407.00088 · cs.DC, cs.AI · submitted Jun 25, 2024 · updated Mar 25, 2025
abstract · pdf · html · EuroSys 2025

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