# Source: https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/v5.0.0/quantization/awq.md

# AWQ

[Activation-aware Weight Quantization (AWQ)](https://hf.co/papers/2306.00978) preserves a small fraction of the weights that are important for LLM performance to compress a model to 4-bits with minimal performance degradation.

There are several libraries for quantizing models with the AWQ algorithm, such as [llm-awq](https://github.com/mit-han-lab/llm-awq), [autoawq](https://github.com/casper-hansen/AutoAWQ) or [optimum-intel](https://huggingface.co/docs/optimum/main/en/intel/optimization_inc). Transformers supports loading models quantized with the llm-awq and autoawq libraries. This guide will show you how to load models quantized with autoawq, but the process is similar for llm-awq quantized models.

Run the command below to install autoawq

```bash
pip install autoawq
```

> [!WARNING]
> AutoAWQ downgrades Transformers to version 4.47.1. If you want to do inference with AutoAWQ, you may need to reinstall your Transformers' version after installing AutoAWQ.

Identify an AWQ-quantized model by checking the `quant_method` key in the models [config.json](https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/zephyr-7B-alpha-AWQ/blob/main/config.json) file.

```json
{
  "_name_or_path": "/workspace/process/huggingfaceh4_zephyr-7b-alpha/source",
  "architectures": [
    "MistralForCausalLM"
  ],
  ...
  ...
  ...
  "quantization_config": {
    "quant_method": "awq",
    "zero_point": true,
    "group_size": 128,
    "bits": 4,
    "version": "gemm"
  }
}
```

Load the AWQ-quantized model with [from_pretrained()](/docs/transformers/v5.0.0/en/main_classes/model#transformers.PreTrainedModel.from_pretrained). This automatically sets the other weights to fp16 by default for performance reasons. Use the `dtype` parameter to load these other weights in a different format.

If the model is loaded on the CPU, use the `device_map` parameter to move it to an accelerator.

```py
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer
from accelerate import Accelerator
import torch

device = Accelerator().device

model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
  "TheBloke/zephyr-7B-alpha-AWQ",
  dtype=torch.float32,
  device_map=device
)
```

Use `attn_implementation` to enable [FlashAttention2](../perf_infer_gpu_one#flashattention-2) to further accelerate inference.

```py
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer

model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
  "TheBloke/zephyr-7B-alpha-AWQ",
  attn_implementation="flash_attention_2",
  device_map="cuda:0"
)
```

## Fused modules

Fused modules offer improved accuracy and performance. They are supported out-of-the-box for AWQ modules for [Llama](https://huggingface.co/meta-llama) and [Mistral](https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1) architectures, but you can also fuse AWQ modules for unsupported architectures.

> [!WARNING]
> Fused modules cannot be combined with other optimization techniques such as FlashAttention2.

Create an [AwqConfig](/docs/transformers/v5.0.0/en/main_classes/quantization#transformers.AwqConfig) and set the parameters `fuse_max_seq_len` and `do_fuse=True` to enable fused modules. The `fuse_max_seq_len` parameter is the total sequence length and it should include the context length and the expected generation length. Set it to a larger value to be safe.

The example below fuses the AWQ modules of the [TheBloke/Mistral-7B-OpenOrca-AWQ](https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Mistral-7B-OpenOrca-AWQ) model.

```python
import torch
from transformers import AwqConfig, AutoModelForCausalLM

quantization_config = AwqConfig(
    bits=4,
    fuse_max_seq_len=512,
    do_fuse=True,
)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
  "TheBloke/Mistral-7B-OpenOrca-AWQ",
  quantization_config=quantization_config
).to(0)
```

The [TheBloke/Mistral-7B-OpenOrca-AWQ](https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Mistral-7B-OpenOrca-AWQ) model was benchmarked with `batch_size=1` with and without fused modules.

Unfused module

|   Batch Size |   Prefill Length |   Decode Length |   Prefill tokens/s |   Decode tokens/s | Memory (VRAM)   |
|-------------:|-----------------:|----------------:|-------------------:|------------------:|:----------------|
|            1 |               32 |              32 |            60.0984 |           38.4537 | 4.50 GB (5.68%) |
|            1 |               64 |              64 |          1333.67   |           31.6604 | 4.50 GB (5.68%) |
|            1 |              128 |             128 |          2434.06   |           31.6272 | 4.50 GB (5.68%) |
|            1 |              256 |             256 |          3072.26   |           38.1731 | 4.50 GB (5.68%) |
|            1 |              512 |             512 |          3184.74   |           31.6819 | 4.59 GB (5.80%) |
|            1 |             1024 |            1024 |          3148.18   |           36.8031 | 4.81 GB (6.07%) |
|            1 |             2048 |            2048 |          2927.33   |           35.2676 | 5.73 GB (7.23%) |

Fused module

|   Batch Size |   Prefill Length |   Decode Length |   Prefill tokens/s |   Decode tokens/s | Memory (VRAM)   |
|-------------:|-----------------:|----------------:|-------------------:|------------------:|:----------------|
|            1 |               32 |              32 |            81.4899 |           80.2569 | 4.00 GB (5.05%) |
|            1 |               64 |              64 |          1756.1    |          106.26   | 4.00 GB (5.05%) |
|            1 |              128 |             128 |          2479.32   |          105.631  | 4.00 GB (5.06%) |
|            1 |              256 |             256 |          1813.6    |           85.7485 | 4.01 GB (5.06%) |
|            1 |              512 |             512 |          2848.9    |           97.701  | 4.11 GB (5.19%) |
|            1 |             1024 |            1024 |          3044.35   |           87.7323 | 4.41 GB (5.57%) |
|            1 |             2048 |            2048 |          2715.11   |           89.4709 | 5.57 GB (7.04%) |

The speed and throughput of fused and unfused modules were also tested with the [optimum-benchmark](https://github.com/huggingface/optimum-benchmark) library.

  
    
    forward peak memory/batch size
  
  
    
    generate throughput/batch size
  

For architectures that don't support fused modules, create an [AwqConfig](/docs/transformers/v5.0.0/en/main_classes/quantization#transformers.AwqConfig) and define a custom fusing mapping in `modules_to_fuse` to determine which modules need to be fused.

The example below fuses the AWQ modules of the [TheBloke/Yi-34B-AWQ](https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Yi-34B-AWQ) model.

```python
import torch
from transformers import AwqConfig, AutoModelForCausalLM

quantization_config = AwqConfig(
    bits=4,
    fuse_max_seq_len=512,
    modules_to_fuse={
        "attention": ["q_proj", "k_proj", "v_proj", "o_proj"],
        "layernorm": ["ln1", "ln2", "norm"],
        "mlp": ["gate_proj", "up_proj", "down_proj"],
        "use_alibi": False,
        "num_attention_heads": 56,
        "num_key_value_heads": 8,
        "hidden_size": 7168
    }
)

model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
  "TheBloke/Yi-34B-AWQ",
  quantization_config=quantization_config
).to(0)
```

The parameter `modules_to_fuse` should include the following keys.

- `"attention"`: The names of the attention layers to fuse in the following order: query, key, value and output projection layer. If you don't want to fuse these layers, pass an empty list.
- `"layernorm"`: The names of all the LayerNorm layers you want to replace with a custom fused LayerNorm. If you don't want to fuse these layers, pass an empty list.
- `"mlp"`: The names of the MLP layers you want to fuse into a single MLP layer in the order: (gate (dense, layer, post-attention) / up / down layers).
- `"use_alibi"`: If your model uses ALiBi positional embedding.
- `"num_attention_heads"`: The number of attention heads.
- `"num_key_value_heads"`: The number of key value heads that should be used to implement Grouped Query Attention (GQA).

  | parameter value | attention |
  |---|---|
  | `num_key_value_heads=num_attention_heads` | Multi-Head Attention |
  | `num_key_value_heads=1` | Multi-Query Attention |
  | `num_key_value_heads=...` | Grouped Query Attention |

- `"hidden_size"`: The dimension of the hidden representations.

## ExLlamaV2

[ExLlamaV2](https://github.com/turboderp/exllamav2) kernels support faster prefill and decoding. Run the command below to install the latest version of autoawq with ExLlamaV2 support.

```bash
pip install git+https://github.com/casper-hansen/AutoAWQ.git
```

Set `version="exllama"` in [AwqConfig](/docs/transformers/v5.0.0/en/main_classes/quantization#transformers.AwqConfig) to enable ExLlamaV2 kernels.

> [!TIP]
> ExLlamaV2 is supported on AMD GPUs.

```py
import torch
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer, AwqConfig

quantization_config = AwqConfig(version="exllama")

model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    "TheBloke/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.1-AWQ",
    quantization_config=quantization_config,
    device_map="auto",
)
```

## CPU

[Intel Extension for PyTorch (IPEX)](https://intel.github.io/intel-extension-for-pytorch/cpu/latest/) is designed to enable performance optimizations on Intel hardware. Run the command below to install the latest version of autoawq with IPEX support.

```bash
pip install intel-extension-for-pytorch # for IPEX-GPU refer to https://intel.github.io/intel-extension-for-pytorch/xpu/2.5.10+xpu/ 
pip install git+https://github.com/casper-hansen/AutoAWQ.git
```

Set `version="ipex"` in [AwqConfig](/docs/transformers/v5.0.0/en/main_classes/quantization#transformers.AwqConfig) to enable ExLlamaV2 kernels.

```python
import torch
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer, AwqConfig

device = "cpu" # set to "xpu" for Intel GPU
quantization_config = AwqConfig(version="ipex")

model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    "TheBloke/TinyLlama-1.1B-Chat-v0.3-AWQ",
    quantization_config=quantization_config,
    device_map=device,
)
```

## Resources

Run the AWQ demo [notebook](https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1HzZH89yAXJaZgwJDhQj9LqSBux932BvY#scrollTo=Wwsg6nCwoThm) for more examples of how to quantize a model, push a quantized model to the Hub, and more.