#
bitsandbytes

bitsandbytes is the easiest option for quantizing a model to 8 and 4-bit. 8-bit quantization multiplies outliers in fp16 with non-outliers in int8, converts the non-outlier values back to fp16, and then adds them together to return the weights in fp16. This reduces the degradative effect outlier values have on a model’s performance.

4-bit quantization compresses a model even further, and it is commonly used with QLoRA to finetune quantized LLMs.

This guide demonstrates how quantization can enable running FLUX.1-dev on less than 16GB of VRAM and even on a free Google Colab instance.

To use bitsandbytes, make sure you have the following libraries installed:

    pip install diffusers transformers accelerate bitsandbytes -U

Now you can quantize a model by passing a BitsAndBytesConfig to from_pretrained(). This works for any model in any modality, as long as it supports loading with Accelerate and contains `torch.nn.Linear` layers.

8-bit
4-bit

Quantizing a model in 8-bit halves the memory-usage.

bitsandbytes is supported in both Transformers and Diffusers, so you can quantize both the FluxTransformer2DModel and T5EncoderModel.

    from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig as DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig
    from transformers import BitsAndBytesConfig as TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig

    from diffusers import FluxTransformer2DModel
    from transformers import T5EncoderModel

    quant_config = TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig(
        load_in_8bit=True,
    )

    text_encoder_2_8bit = T5EncoderModel.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        subfolder="text_encoder_2",
        quantization_config=quant_config,
        torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    )

    quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(
        load_in_8bit=True,
    )

    transformer_8bit = FluxTransformer2DModel.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        subfolder="transformer",
        quantization_config=quant_config,
        torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    )

By default, all the other modules such as `torch.nn.LayerNorm` are converted to `torch.float16`. You can change the data type of these modules with the `torch_dtype` parameter.

    transformer_8bit = FluxTransformer2DModel.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        subfolder="transformer",
        quantization_config=quant_config,
        torch_dtype=torch.float32,
    )

Let’s generate an image using our quantized models.

Setting `device_map="auto"` automatically fills all available space on the GPU(s) first, then the CPU, and finally, the hard drive (the absolute slowest option) if there is still not enough memory.

    pipe = FluxPipeline.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        transformer=transformer_8bit,
        text_encoder_2=text_encoder_2_8bit,
        torch_dtype=torch.float16,
        device_map="auto",
    )

    pipe_kwargs = {
        "prompt": "A cat holding a sign that says hello world",
        "height": 1024,
        "width": 1024,
        "guidance_scale": 3.5,
        "num_inference_steps": 50,
        "max_sequence_length": 512,
    }

    image = pipe(
        generator=torch.Generator("cpu").manual_seed(0),
        **pipe_kwargs,
    ).images[0]

    image.resize((224, 224))

Once a model is quantized, you can push the model to the Hub with the push_to_hub() method. The quantization `config.json` file is pushed first, followed by the quantized model weights. You can also save the serialized 8-bit models locally with save_pretrained().

Training with 8-bit and 4-bit weights are only supported for training extra parameters.

Check your memory footprint with the `get_memory_footprint` method:

    print(model.get_memory_footprint())

Quantized models can be loaded from the from_pretrained() method without needing to specify the `quantization_config` parameters:

    from diffusers import FluxTransformer2DModel, BitsAndBytesConfig

    quantization_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_4bit=True)

    model_4bit = FluxTransformer2DModel.from_pretrained(
        "hf-internal-testing/flux.1-dev-nf4-pkg", subfolder="transformer"
    )

##
8-bit (LLM.int8() algorithm)

Learn more about the details of 8-bit quantization in this blog post!

This section explores some of the specific features of 8-bit models, such as outlier thresholds and skipping module conversion.

###
Outlier threshold

An “outlier” is a hidden state value greater than a certain threshold, and these values are computed in fp16. While the values are usually normally distributed ([-3.5, 3.5]), this distribution can be very different for large models ([-60, 6] or [6, 60]). 8-bit quantization works well for values ~5, but beyond that, there is a significant performance penalty. A good default threshold value is 6, but a lower threshold may be needed for more unstable models (small models or finetuning).

To find the best threshold for your model, we recommend experimenting with the `llm_int8_threshold` parameter in BitsAndBytesConfig:

    from diffusers import FluxTransformer2DModel, BitsAndBytesConfig

    quantization_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(
        load_in_8bit=True, llm_int8_threshold=10,
    )

    model_8bit = FluxTransformer2DModel.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        subfolder="transformer",
        quantization_config=quantization_config,
    )

###
Skip module conversion

For some models, you don’t need to quantize every module to 8-bit which can actually cause instability. For example, for diffusion models like Stable Diffusion 3, the `proj_out` module can be skipped using the `llm_int8_skip_modules` parameter in BitsAndBytesConfig:

    from diffusers import SD3Transformer2DModel, BitsAndBytesConfig

    quantization_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(
        load_in_8bit=True, llm_int8_skip_modules=["proj_out"],
    )

    model_8bit = SD3Transformer2DModel.from_pretrained(
        "stabilityai/stable-diffusion-3-medium-diffusers",
        subfolder="transformer",
        quantization_config=quantization_config,
    )

##
4-bit (QLoRA algorithm)

Learn more about its details in this blog post.

This section explores some of the specific features of 4-bit models, such as changing the compute data type, using the Normal Float 4 (NF4) data type, and using nested quantization.

###
Compute data type

To speedup computation, you can change the data type from float32 (the default value) to bf16 using the `bnb_4bit_compute_dtype` parameter in BitsAndBytesConfig:

    import torch
    from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig

    quantization_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_4bit=True, bnb_4bit_compute_dtype=torch.bfloat16)

###
Normal Float 4 (NF4)

NF4 is a 4-bit data type from the QLoRA paper, adapted for weights initialized from a normal distribution. You should use NF4 for training 4-bit base models. This can be configured with the `bnb_4bit_quant_type` parameter in the BitsAndBytesConfig:

    from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig as DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig
    from transformers import BitsAndBytesConfig as TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig

    from diffusers import FluxTransformer2DModel
    from transformers import T5EncoderModel

    quant_config = TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig(
        load_in_4bit=True,
        bnb_4bit_quant_type="nf4",
    )

    text_encoder_2_4bit = T5EncoderModel.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        subfolder="text_encoder_2",
        quantization_config=quant_config,
        torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    )

    quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(
        load_in_4bit=True,
        bnb_4bit_quant_type="nf4",
    )

    transformer_4bit = FluxTransformer2DModel.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        subfolder="transformer",
        quantization_config=quant_config,
        torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    )

For inference, the `bnb_4bit_quant_type` does not have a huge impact on performance. However, to remain consistent with the model weights, you should use the `bnb_4bit_compute_dtype` and `torch_dtype` values.

###
Nested quantization

Nested quantization is a technique that can save additional memory at no additional performance cost. This feature performs a second quantization of the already quantized weights to save an additional 0.4 bits/parameter.

    from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig as DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig
    from transformers import BitsAndBytesConfig as TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig

    from diffusers import FluxTransformer2DModel
    from transformers import T5EncoderModel

    quant_config = TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig(
        load_in_4bit=True,
        bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True,
    )

    text_encoder_2_4bit = T5EncoderModel.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        subfolder="text_encoder_2",
        quantization_config=quant_config,
        torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    )

    quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(
        load_in_4bit=True,
        bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True,
    )

    transformer_4bit = FluxTransformer2DModel.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        subfolder="transformer",
        quantization_config=quant_config,
        torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    )

##
Dequantizing bitsandbytes models

Once quantized, you can dequantize a model to its original precision, but this might result in a small loss of quality. Make sure you have enough GPU RAM to fit the dequantized model.

    from diffusers import BitsAndBytesConfig as DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig
    from transformers import BitsAndBytesConfig as TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig

    from diffusers import FluxTransformer2DModel
    from transformers import T5EncoderModel

    quant_config = TransformersBitsAndBytesConfig(
        load_in_4bit=True,
        bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True,
    )

    text_encoder_2_4bit = T5EncoderModel.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        subfolder="text_encoder_2",
        quantization_config=quant_config,
        torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    )

    quant_config = DiffusersBitsAndBytesConfig(
        load_in_4bit=True,
        bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True,
    )

    transformer_4bit = FluxTransformer2DModel.from_pretrained(
        "black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev",
        subfolder="transformer",
        quantization_config=quant_config,
        torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    )

    text_encoder_2_4bit.dequantize()
    transformer_4bit.dequantize()

##
Resources

- End-to-end notebook showing Flux.1 Dev inference in a free-tier Colab
- Training

< > Update on GitHub