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# Quantization

Quantization techniques focus on representing data with less information while also trying to not lose too much accuracy. This often means converting a data type to represent the same information with fewer bits. For example, if your model weights are stored as 32-bit floating points and they're quantized to 16-bit floating points, this halves the model size which makes it easier to store and reduces memory-usage. Lower precision can also speedup inference because it takes less time to perform calculations with fewer bits.

<Tip>

Interested in adding a new quantization method to Transformers? Refer to the [Contribute new quantization method guide](https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/main/en/quantization/contribute) to learn more about adding a new quantization method.

</Tip>

<Tip>

If you are new to the quantization field, we recommend you to check out these beginner-friendly courses about quantization in collaboration with DeepLearning.AI:

* [Quantization Fundamentals with Hugging Face](https://www.deeplearning.ai/short-courses/quantization-fundamentals-with-hugging-face/)
* [Quantization in Depth](https://www.deeplearning.ai/short-courses/quantization-in-depth/)

</Tip>

## When to use what?

This section will be expanded once Diffusers has multiple quantization backends. Currently, we only support `bitsandbytes`. [This resource](https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/main/en/quantization/overview#when-to-use-what) provides a good overview of the pros and cons of different quantization techniques. 