Papers
arxiv:2605.08114

Statistical Inference and Quality Measures of KV Cache Quantisations Inspired by TurboQuant

Published on Apr 27
Authors:

Abstract

Analysis of KV cache quantization schemes reveals that a K-only quantization strategy outperforms joint K and V quantization at common bit budgets due to nonlinear softmax amplification of key errors.

We analyse three KV cache quantization schemes under a fair bit budget: KV (scalar MSE baseline), KQV (WHT + MSE on K; WHT + MSE + QJL on V), and QKQV (WHT + MSE + QJL on both). Starting from the Beta distribution on the hypersphere, we trace how QJL on K inflates inner product variance by π/2, which softmax amplifies nonlinearly via Jensen's inequality, and we present statistical inference and information metrics to highlight practical differences. Three empirical findings emerge. (1)~At n=4 (the practically dominant budget), KQV wins on every measure -- KL divergence, geometric K error, and 6D distance -- across all distributions and ranks tested. (2)~The K--V asymmetry is unconditional: QKQV is consistently worse than KQV in KL divergence at every budget and distribution. (3)~A budget-dependent crossover exists: QKQV achieves better geometric K reconstruction at n in {2,3,5}, KQV at n in {4,6}, invariant to rank and tail weight -- an open rate-distortion problem. KL(p_{ref} | p_{quant}), K-only by construction, bridges K direction error to routing corruption and output collapse. We present a sufficient condition when the Jensen mechanism amplifies superlinearly through the softmax. At n in {2,3,5}, QKQV wins geometrically because this assumption does not bind. At n=4, elevated K error and KL divergence for QKQV strongly suggest the Jensen mechanism is the operative cause of the crossover, providing a new perspective and explanation.

Community

Sign up or log in to comment

Get this paper in your agent:

hf papers read 2605.08114
Don't have the latest CLI?
curl -LsSf https://hf.co/cli/install.sh | bash

Models citing this paper 0

No model linking this paper

Cite arxiv.org/abs/2605.08114 in a model README.md to link it from this page.

Datasets citing this paper 0

No dataset linking this paper

Cite arxiv.org/abs/2605.08114 in a dataset README.md to link it from this page.

Spaces citing this paper 0

No Space linking this paper

Cite arxiv.org/abs/2605.08114 in a Space README.md to link it from this page.

Collections including this paper 0

No Collection including this paper

Add this paper to a collection to link it from this page.