h-guo18andClaude Opus 5.5 9e1ede83f8 refactor(speculative): project the base distribution only where a loss reads it, family-wide
DSpark already projected its teacher this way; the rest of the DFlash family did not.
DFlash's self-logit distillation (on by default) rebuilt [B, seq, vocab] base logits every
step -- offline/streaming by running the whole captured final hidden through lm_head,
online through the CausalLM forward -- then gathered the N * block_size rows it uses out of
them. LiLiCorr's distractor penalty read k candidate logits per slot out of that same full
tensor.

Now there is one way in:
- DFlashBaseModelOutput carries the base final hidden (and whether it was captured before
  the final norm), never logits built from it; from_offline_dict loses need_logits,
  defer_lm_head and base_model_lm_head.
- HFDFlashModel._base_outputs builds it for the whole family: replayed offline, and online
  through the inner model only, as DSpark and Domino already did, so text batches never run
  the base lm_head. Multimodal batches still need the top-level forward and keep its logits
  as the teacher, since hidden_states[-1] is not lm_head's input on every transformers
  version (Qwen3-VL on 4.57).
- HFDFlashModel._teacher_logits gathers the requested rows, re-applies the base final norm
  when the capture was pre-norm, and projects just those rows -- or, given token_ids, just
  those vocab entries, which is all LiLiCorr's penalty needs.

DFlash KD (and DFlash2 through the shared loss), DSpark and LiLiCorr all read the teacher
through it; _compute_loss takes it as a DFlashBaseModelOutput instead of a logits tensor.
Domino reads no base distribution and is unchanged.

One behavior change: online, the teacher used to be the CausalLM forward's logits, which for
Gemma-family bases include final_logit_softcapping; it is now lm_head on the final hidden,
which is what offline/streaming training and DSpark have always used. Bases without
softcapping get the same teacher up to matmul rounding.

Tested: tests/unit/torch/speculative 369 passed on transformers 5.12 and the affected files
156 passed on 4.57; the speculative GPU tests 15 passed. New tests pin the teacher against
the full-sequence projection (post- and pre-norm capture, token_ids, handed-over logits) and
that a training step never feeds lm_head the whole sequence; each fails when its property
is broken. On JHB, Gemma-4-E4B DSpark streaming for 80 steps against the same config before
this commit: fwd+bwd 374.7 ms vs 373.3 / 376.7, mean loss over steps 21-45 2.6541 vs
2.6543 / 2.6545, and the loss spikes this config shows at steps 46-55 land on the same steps
within the controls' range.

Signed-off-by: h-guo18 <67671475+h-guo18@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-01 15:30:43 +00:00
…
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NVIDIA Model Optimizer

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NVIDIA Model Optimizer (referred to as Model Optimizer, or ModelOpt) is a library comprising state-of-the-art model optimization techniques including quantization, pruning, Neural Architecture Search (NAS), distillation, speculative decoding and sparsity to accelerate models.

[Input] Model Optimizer currently supports inputs of a Hugging Face, PyTorch or ONNX model.

[Optimize] Model Optimizer provides Python APIs for users to easily compose the above model optimization techniques and export an optimized quantized checkpoint. Model Optimizer is also integrated with NVIDIA Megatron-Bridge, Megatron-LM and Hugging Face Accelerate for training required inference optimization techniques.

[Export for deployment] Seamlessly integrated within the NVIDIA AI software ecosystem, the quantized checkpoint generated from Model Optimizer is ready for deployment in downstream inference frameworks like SGLang, TensorRT-LLM, TensorRT, or vLLM. The unified Hugging Face export API now supports both transformers and diffusers models.

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Install

To install stable release packages for Model Optimizer with pip from PyPI:

pip install -U nvidia-modelopt[all]

Model Optimizer will download and install additional third-party open source software projects. Review the license terms of these open source projects before use.

To install from source in editable mode with all development dependencies or to use the latest features, run:

# Clone the Model Optimizer repository
git clone git@github.com:NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer.git
cd Model-Optimizer

pip install -e .[dev]

You can also directly use NVIDIA container images, which have Model Optimizer pre-installed:

  • nvcr.io/nvidia/pytorch:<version>-py3
  • nvcr.io/nvidia/nemo:<version>
  • nvcr.io/nvidia/tensorrt-llm/release:<version>

Before pulling and using the container images, please review their respective license terms. Make sure to upgrade Model Optimizer to the latest version as described above. Visit our installation guide for more fine-grained control on installed dependencies or for alternative docker images and environment variables to setup.

Techniques

Technique Description Examples Docs
Post Training Quantization Compress model size by 2x-4x, speeding up inference while preserving model quality! [HF LLMs / VLMs] [Megatron-Bridge LLMs / VLMs] [Diffusers] [ONNX] [Windows] [docs]
Quantization Aware Training / Distillation Refine accuracy of quantized models even further with a few training steps! [Hugging Face] [Megatron-Bridge] [docs]
Pruning Reduce your model parameters or memory footprint and accelerate inference by removing unnecessary weights! [General] [Megatron-Bridge]
Distillation Reduce deployment model size by teaching small models to behave like larger models! [Hugging Face] [Megatron-Bridge] [Megatron-LM] [docs]
Speculative Decoding Train draft modules to predict extra tokens during inference! [Hugging Face] [Megatron-LM] [docs]
Sparsity Efficiently compress your model by storing only its non-zero parameter values and their locations [Hugging Face] [docs]

Pre-Quantized Checkpoints

Resources

Model Support Matrix

Model Type Support Matrix
LLM / VLM Quantization View Support Matrix
Diffusers Quantization View Support Matrix
ONNX Quantization View Support Matrix
Windows Quantization View Support Matrix
Quantization Aware Training View Support Matrix
Pruning View Support Matrix
Distillation View Support Matrix
Speculative Decoding View Support Matrix

Deprecation Policy

Model Optimizer follows a structured approach to managing deprecated features:

  • Communication: Deprecation notices are documented in the Changelog. Deprecated items include source code statements indicating deprecation timing, with runtime warnings issued upon use.
  • Migration Period: Since Model Optimizer is still pre-1.0, we provide a 1-release (~1-month) migration period after deprecation. During this window, deprecated features continue functioning while issuing warnings.
  • Scope: The policy addresses both complete deprecations (entire APIs removed) and partial ones (specific parameters removed while methods remain).
  • Removal: Following the migration period, deprecated elements are removed in alignment with semantic versioning standards, potentially including breaking changes in minor version updates while Model Optimizer remains in 0.x.

Citation

If you use NVIDIA Model Optimizer in your research, please cite it as follows:

@misc{nvidia-modelopt,
  author       = {{NVIDIA Corporation}},
  title        = {{NVIDIA Model Optimizer}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer}},
  year         = {2024--2026},
  note         = {GitHub repository}
}

Contributing

Model Optimizer is now open source! We welcome any feedback, feature requests and PRs. Please read our Contributing guidelines for details on how to contribute to this project.

AI Agents

ModelOpt's agent skills can be installed from this repository and used in any workspace.

Claude Code

claude plugin marketplace add https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer.git
claude plugin install modelopt@modelopt

Codex

codex plugin marketplace add https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer.git

Then open /plugins, select the modelopt marketplace, and install modelopt. Contributors can also use the skills directly from a checkout. See the agent tooling notes.

Top Contributors

Contributors

Happy optimizing!

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