Keval MorabiaandClaude Opus 4.8 55a2101e2f Update Nemotron-3 Pruning, Distillation and PTQ results based on new shared calibration loop with seq packing and add tool-calling eval fix (#1660)
### What does this PR do?

Type of change: documentation + minor example-script tweaks

Follow-up to #1601. Originally scoped to add **NVFP4 + QAD**, this PR
was **repurposed** to refresh the [Nemotron-3-Nano-30B-A3B-BF16
tutorial](examples/megatron_bridge/tutorials/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-30B-A3B-BF16/README.md)
results using the **new shared calibration loop (sequence packing)** and
to **fix tool calling in evaluation**.

- Refreshed the prune → distill → eval → **FP8** results (accuracy +
vLLM throughput tables) with the new calibration loop.
- **Tool-calling eval fix** (`nemo_evaluator.yaml`): GPQA and AIME now
run the Python sandbox tool. The tutorial reports both **with-tools**
and **no-tools** GPQA/AIME and shows `mean ± std_dev`.
- Script tweaks: `quantize.py` calibration now uses sequence packing
(`pack=True`) which leads to slight improvement in PTQ;
`prune_minitron.py` defaults `inference_batch_size` to
`calib_batch_size`.

### Testing

Documentation + small example-script changes; tutorial relative links
resolve and the results tables / figure were verified consistent.

### Before your PR is "*Ready for review*"

- Is this change backward compatible?: Yes
- If you copied code from any other sources or added a new PIP
dependency, did you follow guidance in `CONTRIBUTING.md`: N/A
- Did you write any new necessary tests?: N/A
- Did you update
[Changelog](https://github.com/NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst)?:
✅
- Did you get Claude approval on this PR?: ❌ (will run `/claude review`)


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
## Summary by CodeRabbit

* **Documentation**
* Updated the main guide and evaluator instructions for prune + distill
+ FP8/NVFP4 quantization, including refreshed vLLM deployment tips,
benchmark/noise presentation, and long-context tool-calling attribution
notes.
* Refreshed README technique examples/links, reordered the model support
matrix rows, and improved pruning overview/support-matrix text.

* **Changes to Examples**
* NAS pruning now documents higher GPU memory usage vs manual pruning;
pruning batching defaults were improved.
* Quantization PTQ calibration uses packed document packing; quantized
checkpoint export messaging was streamlined.
* Updated pruning/distillation/quantization tutorial guidance,
metrics/tables, command parameters, and evaluator YAML settings
(KV-cache dtype, generation defaults, task behavior).
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->

---------

Signed-off-by: Keval Morabia <28916987+kevalmorabia97@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-06-15 18:32:13 +00:00

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NVIDIA Model Optimizer

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Documentation | Roadmap


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.

Latest News

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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 Quantization View Support Matrix
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.

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

For AI-assisted development setup, see the agent tooling notes.

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Contributors

Happy optimizing!

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