ZipNN: Lossless Compression for AI Models
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Abstract (arXiv)
With the growth of model sizes and the scale of their deployment, their sheer size burdens the infrastructure requiring more network and more storage to accommodate these. While there is a vast model compression literature deleting parts of the model weights for faster inference, we investigate a more traditional type of compression - one that represents the model in a compact form and is coupled with a decompression algorithm that returns it to its original form and size - namely lossless compression. We present ZipNN a lossless compression tailored to neural networks. Somewhat surprisingly, we show that specific lossless compression can gain significant network and storage reduction on popular models, often saving 33% and at times reducing over 50% of the model size. We investigate the source of model compressibility and introduce specialized compression variants tailored for models that further increase the effectiveness of compression. On popular models (e.g. Llama 3) ZipNN shows space savings that are over 17% better than vanilla compression while also improving compression and decompression speeds by 62%. We estimate that these methods could save over an ExaByte per month of network traffic downloaded from a large model hub like Hugging Face.
Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 39 of its 76 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Nov 2024.
Builds on
39 of 76 references.
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27 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 11.
12 papers.
- 202570% Size, 100% Accuracy: Lossless LLM Compression for Efficient GPU Inference via Dynamic-Length Float (DFloat11)cited by 23
- 2026ZipServ: Fast and Memory-Efficient LLM Inference with Hardware-Aware Lossless Compressioncited by 8
- 2026ZipMoE: Efficient On-Device MoE Serving via Lossless Compression and Cache-Affinity Schedulingcited by 4
- 2026Statistically-Lossless Quantization of Large Language Modelscited by 4
- 2026ENEC: A Lossless AI Model Compression Method Enabling Fast Inference on Ascend NPUscited by 3
- 2026UCCL-Zip: Lossless Compression Supercharged GPU Communicationcited by 2
- 2026ZipCCL: Efficient Lossless Data Compression of Communication Collectives for Accelerating LLM Trainingcited by 1
- 2026Embedding Compression via Spherical Coordinatescited by 0
- 2026FluxMoE: Decoupling Expert Residency for High-Performance MoE Servingcited by 0
- 2026TStore: Rethinking AI Model Hub with Tensor-Centric Compressioncited by 0
- 2026Lossless Tensor Compression as Program Synthesiscited by 0
- 2026EntroPack: Fast and Accurate Entropy-Coded Weight Compression at Arbitrary Bitratescited by 0
- 2026EntroPack: Fast and Accurate Entropy-Coded Weight Compression at Arbitrary Bitrates28 Sep 2026
- 2026Lossless Tensor Compression as Program Synthesis3 Aug 2026
- 2026Statistically-Lossless Quantization of Large Language Models4 May 2026
- 2026ZipCCL: Efficient Lossless Data Compression of Communication Collectives for Accelerating LLM Training30 Apr 2026
- 2026UCCL-Zip: Lossless Compression Supercharged GPU Communication19 Apr 2026
- 2026TStore: Rethinking AI Model Hub with Tensor-Centric Compression18 Apr 2026
- 2026FluxMoE: Decoupling Expert Residency for High-Performance MoE Serving3 Apr 2026
- 2026ENEC: A Lossless AI Model Compression Method Enabling Fast Inference on Ascend NPUs28 Mar 2026
- 2026ZipServ: Fast and Memory-Efficient LLM Inference with Hardware-Aware Lossless Compression18 Mar 2026
- 2026ZipMoE: Efficient On-Device MoE Serving via Lossless Compression and Cache-Affinity Scheduling29 Jan 2026
- 2026Embedding Compression via Spherical Coordinates22 Jan 2026
- 202570% Size, 100% Accuracy: Lossless LLM Compression for Efficient GPU Inference via Dynamic-Length Float (DFloat11)15 Apr 2025