Techniques

Knowledge Distillation

Definition

A training technique where a smaller "student" model is trained to replicate the behaviour of a larger "teacher" model. Distillation produces compact, fast models suitable for latency-sensitive or resource-constrained deployments without sacrificing too much quality.

Related Terms

Quantization

A model compression technique that reduces the numerical precision of model weights—for example, from 32-bit floats to 8-bit integers—shrinking memory requirements and accelerating inference with minimal accuracy loss. Quantization is essential for deploying LLMs on-premise or at the edge.

Model Compression

A set of techniques—including quantization, distillation, pruning, and low-rank factorisation—that reduce model size and computational requirements while preserving performance. Model compression is essential for deploying powerful models on edge hardware or within cost budgets.

Fine-tuning

The process of taking a pre-trained AI model and further training it on a specific dataset to adapt it for a particular task or domain. Fine-tuning can deliver significantly better performance than prompting alone for specialised enterprise workflows.

Knowing the Terms Is Step One. Applying Them Is Step Two.

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