# AnyBCQ: Hardware Efficient Flexible Binary-Coded Quantization for Multi-Precision LLMs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10467 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10467/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08361/) (2020)
- [Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05457/) (2018)
- [HellaSwag: Can a Machine Really Finish Your Sentence?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07830/) (2019)
- [Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15556/) (2022)
- [PIQA: Reasoning about Physical Commonsense in Natural Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11641/) (2019)
- [Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07682/) (2022)
- [GPTQ: Accurate Post-Training Quantization for Generative Pre-trained Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.17323/) (2022)
- [SmoothQuant: Accurate and Efficient Post-Training Quantization for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10438/) (2022)
- [AWQ: Activation-aware Weight Quantization for LLM Compression and Acceleration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00978/) (2023)
- [SparseGPT: Massive Language Models Can Be Accurately Pruned in One-Shot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00774/) (2023)
- [A Simple and Effective Pruning Approach for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11695/) (2023)
- [QuaRot: Outlier-Free 4-Bit Inference in Rotated LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00456/) (2024)
- [ZeroQuant: Efficient and Affordable Post-Training Quantization for Large-Scale Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01861/) (2022)
- [BRECQ: Pushing the Limit of Post-Training Quantization by Block Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.05426/) (2021)
- [SqueezeLLM: Dense-and-Sparse Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07629/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Knowledge Distillation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13116/) (2024)
- [LUT-GEMM: Quantized Matrix Multiplication based on LUTs for Efficient Inference in Large-Scale Generative Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09557/) (2022)
- [LLM Pruning and Distillation in Practice: The Minitron Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11796/) (2024)
- [Full Stack Optimization of Transformer Inference: a Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14017/) (2023)
- [Any-Precision LLM: Low-Cost Deployment of Multiple, Different-Sized LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10517/) (2024)
- [Any-Precision Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07346/) (2019)
- [GuidedQuant: Large Language Model Quantization via Exploiting End Loss Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07004/) (2025)
- [Alternating Multi-bit Quantization for Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00150/) (2018)
- [ShiftAddLLM: Accelerating Pretrained LLMs via Post-Training Multiplication-Less Reparameterization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05981/) (2024)
- [BiQGEMM: Matrix Multiplication with Lookup Table For Binary-Coding-based Quantized DNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.09904/) (2020)
- [Progressive Mixed-Precision Decoding for Efficient LLM Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13461/) (2024)
- [Matryoshka Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06786/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [MatGPTQ: Efficient and Accurate Inference over Nested Quantized Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03537/) (2026)
- [BPDQ: Bit-Plane Decomposition Quantization on a Variable Grid for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04163/) (2026)
- [SFMP: Fine-Grained, Hardware-Friendly and Search-Free Mixed-Precision Quantization for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01027/) (2026)
- [MoBiQuant: Mixture-of-Bits Quantization for Token-Adaptive Any-Precision LLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20191/) (2026)
- [Multi-Bitwidth Quantization for LLMs Using Additive Codebooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12876/) (2026)
- [StagQ: Constraint-Driven Multi-Precision Weight Quantization for LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05977/) (2026)
- [ELUTQ: Optimizing Quantization Accuracy under LUT-Based Computation for Edge LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19482/) (2025)
- [ELMoE-3D: Leveraging Intrinsic Elasticity of MoE for Hybrid-Bonding-Enabled Self-Speculative Decoding in On-Premises Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14626/) (2026)
- [DuoRate: Two-Rate Per-Expert Precision Allocation for Mixture-of-Experts Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.13328/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The deployment of large language models (LLMs) is increasingly constrained by memory and latency bottlenecks, motivating the need for quantization techniques that flexibly balance accuracy and efficiency. Recent work has introduced multi-precision models, which enable inference at multiple precisions within a single model depending on runtime constraints. To support such flexibility, quantized weights are often stored as bit-planes, where hardware efficiency improves when the compute operates directly at the bit-plane level and activates only the precision required by each request. In this work, we present AnyBCQ, a hardware-friendly multi-precision extension of Binary-Coded Quantization (BCQ) that supports direct bit-plane operations. By representing weights as binary bit-planes with corresponding scale factors, AnyBCQ enables bit-plane-level computation and maps naturally to accelerator-friendly, bit-parallel arithmetic. Our progressive precision expansion mechanism incrementally refines scaling factors while reusing previously assigned binary codes, yielding monotonic improvements in accuracy as additional bits are enabled. We further co-design a specialized kernel that exploits the BCQ structure to support dynamic per-request precision selection with negligible overhead. Experiments on recent LLMs demonstrate that AnyBCQ significantly narrows the accuracy drop in the low-bit regime (e.g. 2-bit), remains competitive at higher precision, and achieves throughput gains of up to 3.0x over half precision and 1.2x over state-of-the-art multi-precision methods. By aligning algorithmic flexibility with hardware efficiency, AnyBCQ provides a practical foundation for multi-precision LLM deployment across diverse service-level objectives.
