Imported from huaweicloud/huaweicloud-skills (skills/ai/modelarts/huawei-cloud-msmodelslim-model-adapt/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add huaweicloud/huaweicloud-skills --skill huawei-cloud-msmodelslim-model-adapt. Copyright stays with the author.

Huawei Cloud msModelSlim Model Adapter

Overview

This skill guides how to create basic adapters for new models to run W8A8/W4A16 quantization workflows in msModelSlim.

Architecture: Model Analysis -> Adapter Creation -> Registration -> Verification (4 Steps)

Related Skills:

• huawei-cloud-msmodelslim-model-analysis - Model structure analysis before adapter implementation
• huawei-cloud-ascend-profiler-db-explorer - Optional: Performance analysis after deployment

Scope

Supported:

• Decoder-only LLM
• Understanding VLM (text/LLM backbone only)

Not supported:

• Multimodal generation (Stable Diffusion/Flux/Wan)
• Encoder-only models
• Non-Transformers architectures

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              msModelSlim Model Adapter Skill                │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  ┌──────────────────┐    ┌──────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │  Model Analysis │───▶│    Adapter Creation          │  │
│  │  - config.json  │    │    - LLM Adapter Template     │  │
│  │  - modeling_*.py│    │    - VLM Adapter Template     │  │
│  └──────────────────┘    │    - Required Interfaces     │  │
│                          └──────────────────────────────┘  │
│                                    │                       │
│                                    ▼                       │
│                          ┌──────────────────┐             │
│                          │  Registration    │             │
│                          │  & Installation  │             │
│                          └──────────────────┘             │
│                                    │                       │
│                                    ▼                       │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│  │                   Verification (4 Steps)              │ │
│  │  1. Generate Test Model → 2. Full Fallback Quant     │ │
│  │  3. Weight Verification → 4. Quant Description     │ │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Architecture Components

This skill involves the following cloud services and components:

• msModelSlim: Huawei Cloud's model quantization framework for efficient model compression
• Transformers Library: Hugging Face Transformers for model loading and processing
• ModelScope: Model download and management platform
• Ascend NPU: Target hardware for quantized model deployment

Use Cases

Typical Problem Scenarios:

• Need to deploy LLM models with reduced memory footprint on Ascend NPU
• Want to optimize inference speed without significant accuracy loss
• Migrating models that don't have built-in msModelSlim support
• Need W8A8/W4A16 quantization for decoder-only LLM or VLM text backbones

Typical User Phrases:

• "How to quantize my custom LLM model for Ascend?"
• "Create msModelSlim adapter for Qwen model"
• "Implement W4A16 quantization workflow"
• "Adapt my VLM text backbone for quantization"
• "How to add quantization support for new models?"

Core Workflow

1. Preparation

• Download Model: Recommended to use modelscope download for non-weight files.
  • Example: modelscope download --model <org>/<model> --local_dir ./models/<name> --exclude '*.safetensors'
• Analyze Model: Read config.json and modeling_*.py to confirm structure and implementation.
  • See: Model Analysis Guide

2. Create Adapter

• Use Templates:
  • LLM: assets/model_adapter_template.py
  • VLM: assets/vlm_model_adapter_template.py
• Implement Interfaces: Implement handle_dataset, init_model, generate_model_visit, generate_model_forward, enable_kv_cache.
• Key Principles:
  • visit and forward must be strictly consistent.
  • MoE models recommended to unpack to pure linear layers.
  • See: Implementation Guide

3. Registration & Installation

• Register model and entry in config/config.ini, then execute bash install.sh.
• See: Registration Guide

4. Verify Adapter (Required)

• Must execute four-step verification: Generate test model -> Full fallback quantization -> Verify full fallback model matches float weights exactly and can load/save completely -> Verify actual quantization workflow works (including description file rule validation).
• See: Verification Guide

Common Scripts

Scripts located in scripts/ directory:

• scripts/step1_generate_test_model.py
• scripts/step2_run_quantization.py
• scripts/step3_verify_weights.py
• scripts/step4_verify_quant_description.py

Prerequisites

System Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• transformers >= 4.40.0
• msmodelslim >= 1.0.0

Environment Check

Prerequisite check: Python3 + transformers + msmodelslim required

python3 --version  # Python3 >= 3.8
python3 -c "import transformers; print('OK')"  # Transformers library
python3 -c "import msmodelslim; print('OK')"  # msModelSlim library

If not installed: pip3 install --user transformers msmodelslim

Reference Documents

Requirements

• transformers >= 4.40.0 installed
• msmodelslim >= 1.0.0 installed
• Transformers model to be adapted
• Understanding of target quantization scheme (W8A8/W4A16)

Core Commands

# Create model adapter
python3 scripts/create_adapter.py \
  --model Qwen2-7B \
  --quantization W8A8

# Run four-step verification
python3 scripts/verify_adapter.py --adapter ./adapter.py

Parameter Confirmation