On the Expressive Power of Weight Quantization in Large Language Models

Shao-Qun Zhang

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arXiv · 2606.22249

On the Expressive Power of Weight Quantization in Large Language Models

Shao-Qun Zhang

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Abstract

In recent years, weight quantization that encodes the learnable parameters of large language models in an $n$-bit format has garnered significant attention due to its potential for model compression and inference acceleration. Many practical techniques have been developed; however, the theoretical understanding of many aspects, especially the approximation and degradation of expressive power as the number of quantization bits decreases, remains unclear. In this paper, we provide a theoretical investigation into the expressive capability of large language models relative to the number of quantization bits. We argue that 1.58-bit is the limiting precision for weight quantization by establishing the universal approximation and expressive collapse properties of weight-quantized models with respect to the number of quantization bits. Additionally, we confirm that weight quantization leads to expressive degradation, in which the expressive capacity of weight-quantized models degrades polynomially as the number of quantization bits decreases. These theoretical findings provide a solid foundation for advancing weight quantization in the context of scaling laws and shed insights for future research in model compression and inference acceleration.

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Shao-Qun Zhang. 2026-06-20. On the Expressive Power of Weight Quantization in Large Language Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.22249

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