Numeric Precision — Why Lower Precision Makes Inference Faster
The fastest way to speed up LLM inference is often not a better algorithm but fewer bits per number. Precision — how many bits represent each weight and activation — is a direct lever on both of the limits this series has built up: it halves or quarters the data you move (bandwidth, post 2) and unlocks the GPU's fastest arithmetic units (compute, post 3). Understanding floating-point formats is understanding why fp16, bf16, and int8 are everywhere in modern inference.
FP32, FP16, BF16, and INT8/INT4 — how a float splits bits between range and precision, why bf16 won, and why fewer bits is a double win: less data to stream from HBM and faster tensor-core math. Quantization and why LLMs tolerate it.