Equation 23 · Part 1 · Dense, Sparse, and Distilled: Comparing Approaches to Frontier Model Capacity
Symbol N_a
What this part means
is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.
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is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.
Full expression→Symbol N_a→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
What quantisation breaks: bytes per parameter, and quietly, the served distribution. Read down the memory column and the current landscape explains itself. Memory bandwidth is the binding constraint in serving, so the methods that reduce resident bytes — distillation, quantisation, cache-shrinking attention — are the ones that move price, while the method that reduces training cost — sparsity — moves what is feasible to build. They are complementary, not competing, and production systems use all four at once.
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