BitDecoding-FP4: Native FP4 KV Cache Decoding via Algorithm-System Co-Design

The key-value (KV) cache dominates memory capacity and bandwidth in long-context LLM serving. While 4-bit microscaling formats (NVFP4, MXFP4) shrink the cache and run attention on FP4 Tensor Cores, a fundamental gap remains between algorithmic quantization and system-aware acceleration: existing FP4 KV systems use vanilla quantization that causes severe accuracy drops, whereas accuracy-oriented 4-bit algorithms rely on vector codebooks whose lookup overhead degrades decoding throughput. We pres…

Source: arXiv cs.AR (Hardware Architecture), published 2026-11-09. The summary is the Hub's own; the full story is at the source. Report a rights or accuracy concern