SOURCE-LINKED INTELLIGENCE

Scale-QLoRA: Code-Invariant Adapter Merging for Native 4-bit Microscaling LLMs

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Sep 3, 2026 · UTC

Merging a LoRA adapter into its base model is standard deployment practice: it removes the runtime adapter's per-forward overhead and leaves a single standalone checkpoint any serving stack can load. On a native 4-bit microscaling checkpoint (NVFP4, MXFP4) that step stops being free. The merged weights must be written back through a quantizer, which re-derives the checkpoint's discrete E2M1 code plane (roughly 90% of the artifact's bytes), so the deployed artifact becomes coupled to one quantization convention, and every later code-touching event in its lifecycle can move it. Done naively the

Read original source ↗ Open in workspace

recordType

paper

region

Global