Learning-based methods have gained attention as general-purpose solvers due to their ability to automatically learn problem-specific heuristics, reducing the need for manually crafted heuristics. However, these methods often face scalability challenges. To address these issues, the improved Sampling algorithm for Combinatorial Optimization (iSCO), using discrete Langevin dynamics, has been proposed, demonstrating better performance than several learning-based solvers. This study proposes a different approach that integrates gradient-based update through continuous relaxation, combined with Quasi-Quantum Annealing (QQA). QQA smoothly transitions the objective function, starting from a simple convex function, minimized at half-integral values, to the original objective function, where the relaxed variables are minimized only in the discrete space. Furthermore, we incorporate parallel run communication leveraging GPUs to enhance exploration capabilities and accelerate convergence. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our method is a competitive general-purpose solver, achieving performance comparable to iSCO and learning-based solvers across various benchmark problems. Notably, our method exhibits superior speed-quality trade-offs for large-scale instances compared to iSCO, learning-based solvers, commercial solvers, and specialized algorithms.

Layer-wise PTQ is a promising technique for compressing large language models (LLMs), due to its simplicity and effectiveness without requiring retraining. However, recent progress in this area is saturating, underscoring the need to revisit its core limitations and explore further improvements. We address this challenge by identifying a key limitation of existing layer-wise PTQ methods: the growth of quantization errors across layers significantly degrades performance, particularly in low-bit regimes. To address this fundamental issue, we propose Quantization Error Propagation (QEP), a general, lightweight, and scalable framework that enhances layer-wise PTQ by explicitly propagating quantization errors and compensating for accumulated errors. QEP also offers a tunable propagation mechanism that prevents overfitting and controls computational overhead, enabling the framework to adapt to various architectures and resource budgets. Extensive experiments on several LLMs demonstrate that QEP-enhanced layer-wise PTQ achieves substantially higher accuracy than existing methods. Notably, the gains are most pronounced in the extremely low-bit quantization regime.

This study proposes the “adaptive flip graph algorithm”, which combines adaptive searches with the flip graph algorithm for finding fast and efficient methods for matrix multiplication. The adaptive flip graph algorithm addresses the inherent limitations of exploration and inefficient search encountered in the original flip graph algorithm, particularly when dealing with large matrix multiplication. For the limitation of exploration, the proposed algorithm adaptively transitions over the flip graph, introducing a flexibility that does not strictly reduce the number of multiplications. Concerning the issue of inefficient search in large instances, the proposed algorithm adaptively constraints the search range instead of relying on a completely random search, facilitating more effective exploration. In particular, a formal proof is provided that the introduction of plus transitions in the proposed algorithm ensures the connectivity of any node in the flip graph, which represents a method of matrix multiplication. Numerical experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the adaptive flip graph algorithm, which involves applying matrices calculated in characteristic 2. This algorithm reduces the number of multiplications for a 4 × 5 matrix multiplied by a 5 × 5 matrix from 76 to 73 and that for a 5 × 5 matrix multiplied by another 5 × 5 matrix from 95 to 94.