bitsandbytes.md

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# bitsandbytes

[bitsandbytes](https://huggingface.co/docs/bitsandbytes/index) is the easiest option for quantizing a model to 8 and 4-bit. 8-bit quantization multiplies outliers in fp16 with non-outliers in int8, converts the non-outlier values back to fp16, and then adds them together to return the weights in fp16. This reduces the degradative effect outlier values have on a model's performance.

4-bit quantization compresses a model even further, and it is commonly used with [QLoRA](https://hf.co/papers/2305.14314) to finetune quantized LLMs.

This guide demonstrates how quantization can enable running
[FLUX.1-dev](https://huggingface.co/black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev)
on less than 16GB of VRAM and even on a free Google
Colab instance.

![comparison image](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/diffusers/quant-bnb/comparison.png)

To use bitsandbytes, make sure you have the following libraries installed:

```bash
pip install diffusers transformers accelerate bitsandbytes -U
```

Now you can quantize a model by passing a [`BitsAndBytesConfig`] to [`~ModelMixin.from_pretrained`]. This works for any model in any modality, as long as it supports loading with [Accelerate](https://hf.co/docs/accelerate/index) and contains `torch.nn.Linear` layers.

<hfoptions id="bnb">
<hfoption id="8-bit">

Quantizing a model in 8-bit halves the memory-usage:

bitsandbytes is supported in both Transformers and Diffusers, so you can quantize both the
[`FluxTransformer2DModel`] and [`~transformers.T5EncoderModel`].

For Ada and higher-series GPUs. we recommend changing `torch_dtype` to `torch.bfloat16`.

> [!TIP]
> The [`CLIPTextModel`] and [`AutoencoderKL`] aren't quantized because they're already small in size and because [`AutoencoderKL`] only has a few `torch.nn.Linear` layers.

```py
from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig as DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig
from transformers import BitsAndBytesConfig as TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig
import torch
from diffusers import AutoModel
from transformers import T5EncoderModel

quant_config = TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_8bit=True,)

text_encoder_2_8bit = T5EncoderModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="text_encoder_2",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)

quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_8bit=True,)

transformer_8bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)
```

By default, all the other modules such as `torch.nn.LayerNorm` are converted to `torch.float16`. You can change the data type of these modules with the `torch_dtype` parameter.

```diff
transformer_8bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
+   torch_dtype=torch.float32,
)
```

Let's generate an image using our quantized models.

Setting `device_map="auto"` automatically fills all available space on the GPU(s) first, then the
CPU, and finally, the hard drive (the absolute slowest option) if there is still not enough memory.

```py
from diffusers import FluxPipeline

pipe = FluxPipeline.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    transformer=transformer_8bit,
    text_encoder_2=text_encoder_2_8bit,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    device_map="auto",
)

pipe_kwargs = {
    "prompt": "A cat holding a sign that says hello world",
    "height": 1024,
    "width": 1024,
    "guidance_scale": 3.5,
    "num_inference_steps": 50,
    "max_sequence_length": 512,
}

image = pipe(**pipe_kwargs, generator=torch.manual_seed(0),).images[0]
```

<div class="flex justify-center">
   <img src="https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/diffusers/quant-bnb/8bit.png"/>
</div>

When there is enough memory, you can also directly move the pipeline to the GPU with `.to("cuda")` and apply [`~DiffusionPipeline.enable_model_cpu_offload`] to optimize GPU memory usage.

Once a model is quantized, you can push the model to the Hub with the [`~ModelMixin.push_to_hub`] method. The quantization `config.json` file is pushed first, followed by the quantized model weights. You can also save the serialized 8-bit models locally with [`~ModelMixin.save_pretrained`].

</hfoption>
<hfoption id="4-bit">

Quantizing a model in 4-bit reduces your memory-usage by 4x:

bitsandbytes is supported in both Transformers and Diffusers, so you can can quantize both the
[`FluxTransformer2DModel`] and [`~transformers.T5EncoderModel`].

For Ada and higher-series GPUs. we recommend changing `torch_dtype` to `torch.bfloat16`.

> [!TIP]
> The [`CLIPTextModel`] and [`AutoencoderKL`] aren't quantized because they're already small in size and because [`AutoencoderKL`] only has a few `torch.nn.Linear` layers.

```py
from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig as DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig
from transformers import BitsAndBytesConfig as TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig
import torch
from diffusers import AutoModel
from transformers import T5EncoderModel

quant_config = TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_4bit=True,)

text_encoder_2_4bit = T5EncoderModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="text_encoder_2",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)

quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_4bit=True,)

transformer_4bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)
```

By default, all the other modules such as `torch.nn.LayerNorm` are converted to `torch.float16`. You can change the data type of these modules with the `torch_dtype` parameter.

```diff
transformer_4bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
+   torch_dtype=torch.float32,
)
```

Let's generate an image using our quantized models.

Setting `device_map="auto"` automatically fills all available space on the GPU(s) first, then the CPU, and finally, the hard drive (the absolute slowest option) if there is still not enough memory.

```py
from diffusers import FluxPipeline

pipe = FluxPipeline.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    transformer=transformer_4bit,
    text_encoder_2=text_encoder_2_4bit,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    device_map="auto",
)

pipe_kwargs = {
    "prompt": "A cat holding a sign that says hello world",
    "height": 1024,
    "width": 1024,
    "guidance_scale": 3.5,
    "num_inference_steps": 50,
    "max_sequence_length": 512,
}

image = pipe(**pipe_kwargs, generator=torch.manual_seed(0),).images[0]
```

<div class="flex justify-center">
   <img src="https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/diffusers/quant-bnb/4bit.png"/>
</div>

When there is enough memory, you can also directly move the pipeline to the GPU with `.to("cuda")` and apply [`~DiffusionPipeline.enable_model_cpu_offload`] to optimize GPU memory usage.

Once a model is quantized, you can push the model to the Hub with the [`~ModelMixin.push_to_hub`] method. The quantization `config.json` file is pushed first, followed by the quantized model weights. You can also save the serialized 4-bit models locally with [`~ModelMixin.save_pretrained`].

</hfoption>
</hfoptions>

> [!WARNING]
> Training with 8-bit and 4-bit weights are only supported for training *extra* parameters.

Check your memory footprint with the `get_memory_footprint` method:

```py
print(model.get_memory_footprint())
```

Note that this only tells you the memory footprint of the model params and does _not_ estimate the inference memory requirements.

Quantized models can be loaded from the [`~ModelMixin.from_pretrained`] method without needing to specify the `quantization_config` parameters:

```py
from diffusers import AutoModel, BitsAndBytesConfig

quantization_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_4bit=True)

model_4bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "hf-internal-testing/flux.1-dev-nf4-pkg", subfolder="transformer"
)
```

## 8-bit (LLM.int8() algorithm)

> [!TIP]
> Learn more about the details of 8-bit quantization in this [blog post](https://huggingface.co/blog/hf-bitsandbytes-integration)!

This section explores some of the specific features of 8-bit models, such as outlier thresholds and skipping module conversion.

### Outlier threshold

An "outlier" is a hidden state value greater than a certain threshold, and these values are computed in fp16. While the values are usually normally distributed ([-3.5, 3.5]), this distribution can be very different for large models ([-60, 6] or [6, 60]). 8-bit quantization works well for values ~5, but beyond that, there is a significant performance penalty. A good default threshold value is 6, but a lower threshold may be needed for more unstable models (small models or finetuning).

To find the best threshold for your model, we recommend experimenting with the `llm_int8_threshold` parameter in [`BitsAndBytesConfig`]:

```py
from diffusers import AutoModel, BitsAndBytesConfig

quantization_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(
    load_in_8bit=True, llm_int8_threshold=10,
)

model_8bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quantization_config,
)
```

### Skip module conversion

For some models, you don't need to quantize every module to 8-bit which can actually cause instability. For example, for diffusion models like [Stable Diffusion 3](../api/pipelines/stable_diffusion/stable_diffusion_3), the `proj_out` module can be skipped using the `llm_int8_skip_modules` parameter in [`BitsAndBytesConfig`]:

```py
from diffusers import SD3Transformer2DModel, BitsAndBytesConfig

quantization_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(
    load_in_8bit=True, llm_int8_skip_modules=["proj_out"],
)

model_8bit = SD3Transformer2DModel.from_pretrained(
    "stabilityai/stable-diffusion-3-medium-diffusers",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quantization_config,
)
```


## 4-bit (QLoRA algorithm)

> [!TIP]
> Learn more about its details in this [blog post](https://huggingface.co/blog/4bit-transformers-bitsandbytes).

This section explores some of the specific features of 4-bit models, such as changing the compute data type, using the Normal Float 4 (NF4) data type, and using nested quantization.


### Compute data type

To speedup computation, you can change the data type from float32 (the default value) to bf16 using the `bnb_4bit_compute_dtype` parameter in [`BitsAndBytesConfig`]:

```py
import torch
from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig

quantization_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_4bit=True, bnb_4bit_compute_dtype=torch.bfloat16)
```

### Normal Float 4 (NF4)

NF4 is a 4-bit data type from the [QLoRA](https://hf.co/papers/2305.14314) paper, adapted for weights initialized from a normal distribution. You should use NF4 for training 4-bit base models. This can be configured with the `bnb_4bit_quant_type` parameter in the [`BitsAndBytesConfig`]:

```py
from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig as DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig
from transformers import BitsAndBytesConfig as TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig

from diffusers import AutoModel
from transformers import T5EncoderModel

quant_config = TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig(
    load_in_4bit=True,
    bnb_4bit_quant_type="nf4",
)

text_encoder_2_4bit = T5EncoderModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="text_encoder_2",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)

quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(
    load_in_4bit=True,
    bnb_4bit_quant_type="nf4",
)

transformer_4bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)
```

For inference, the `bnb_4bit_quant_type` does not have a huge impact on performance. However, to remain consistent with the model weights, you should use the `bnb_4bit_compute_dtype` and `torch_dtype` values.

### Nested quantization

Nested quantization is a technique that can save additional memory at no additional performance cost. This feature performs a second quantization of the already quantized weights to save an additional 0.4 bits/parameter. 

```py
from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig as DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig
from transformers import BitsAndBytesConfig as TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig

from diffusers import AutoModel
from transformers import T5EncoderModel

quant_config = TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig(
    load_in_4bit=True,
    bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True,
)

text_encoder_2_4bit = T5EncoderModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="text_encoder_2",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)

quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(
    load_in_4bit=True,
    bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True,
)

transformer_4bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)
```

## Dequantizing `bitsandbytes` models

Once quantized, you can dequantize a model to its original precision, but this might result in a small loss of quality. Make sure you have enough GPU RAM to fit the dequantized model. 

```python
from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig as DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig
from transformers import BitsAndBytesConfig as TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig

from diffusers import AutoModel
from transformers import T5EncoderModel

quant_config = TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig(
    load_in_4bit=True,
    bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True,
)

text_encoder_2_4bit = T5EncoderModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="text_encoder_2",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)

quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(
    load_in_4bit=True,
    bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True,
)

transformer_4bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)

text_encoder_2_4bit.dequantize()
transformer_4bit.dequantize()
```

## torch.compile

Speed up inference with `torch.compile`. Make sure you have the latest `bitsandbytes` installed and we also recommend installing [PyTorch nightly](https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/).

<hfoptions id="bnb">
<hfoption id="8-bit">
```py
torch._dynamo.config.capture_dynamic_output_shape_ops = True

quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_8bit=True)
transformer_4bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)
transformer_4bit.compile(fullgraph=True)
```

</hfoption>
<hfoption id="4-bit">

```py
quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_4bit=True)
transformer_4bit = AutoModel.from_pretrained(
    "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
    subfolder="transformer",
    quantization_config=quant_config,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
)
transformer_4bit.compile(fullgraph=True)
```
</hfoption>
</hfoptions>

On an RTX 4090 with compilation, 4-bit Flux generation completed in 25.809 seconds versus 32.570 seconds without.

Check out the [benchmarking script](https://gist.github.com/sayakpaul/0db9d8eeeb3d2a0e5ed7cf0d9ca19b7d) for more details.

## Resources

* [End-to-end notebook showing Flux.1 Dev inference in a free-tier Colab](https://gist.github.com/sayakpaul/c76bd845b48759e11687ac550b99d8b4)
* [Training](https://github.com/huggingface/diffusers/blob/8c661ea586bf11cb2440da740dd3c4cf84679b85/examples/dreambooth/README_hidream.md#using-quantization)