← Lab
kvdivergence
confirmedPython · llama.cppInference & servingJuly 7, 2026
the question
Does quantizing the KV cache change the greedy output?
what came out
Yes -- q8_0 KV changes the generated text on 83% of prompts, q4_0 on 100% (often from the start), with flash attention held constant. KV precision alone changes what the model says: 8-bit KV is not lossless at the token level. Controlled, pre-registered, code-reviewed.
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/kvdivergence