← Lab
dequant
confirmedC++ · NEON / Apple M4Systems & data structuresJuly 6, 2026
the question
How fast can a NEON kernel unpack 4-bit weights to floats?
what came out
More than 2x the scalar throughput, bit-exact against the scalar reference (no approximation), consistent across matrix size -- unpacking a whole 16-byte block per pass. This is the dequant step the roofline study flagged as the streaming cost. Standalone C++ ARM NEON; all three pre-registered predictions held.
method & receipts
- Result: confirmed
- Pre-registered — the prediction was written down and committed before the run.
- Reproducible — one script re-runs the whole thing from scratch.
- Independently reviewed — an adversarial review pass, kept in the repo.
- Machine-readable claims — every reported number, in a checkable file.
- Tested — a correctness/benchmark suite ships alongside the code.
→ read the code and re-run it
github.com/v-code01/dequant