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Home/Glossary/Calibration data

Quantization

Calibration data

What it is

Calibration data is a sample of model inputs used to derive quantization scales or protection choices. Its activation patterns stand in for the workload the quantized model will serve.

Why it moves cost and latency

Unrepresentative samples can hide important ranges or overprotect patterns that rarely occur. Calibration quality therefore bounds how honestly post-training choices reflect production inputs.

What it looks like in practice

Teams sample relevant tasks, prompt styles, and sequence shapes without using evaluation answers as tuning targets. They keep a separate evaluation set for quality acceptance after quantization.

Related terms

  • Quantization quality recovery->
  • KV cache quantization->
  • AWQ->
  • GPTQ->
  • Eight-bit integer quantization->
  • FP8 versus eight-bit integer quantization->
  • Outlier channels->

Questions this definition answers

What does Calibration data mean in inference serving?

Calibration data is a sample of model inputs used to derive quantization scales or protection choices. Its activation patterns stand in for the workload the quantized model will serve. Teams sample relevant tasks, prompt styles, and sequence shapes without using evaluation answers as tuning targets. They keep a separate evaluation set for quality acceptance after quantization.

Why can Calibration data move cost or latency?

Unrepresentative samples can hide important ranges or overprotect patterns that rarely occur. Calibration quality therefore bounds how honestly post-training choices reflect production inputs.

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