Quantization scale and zero point

1. What is scale and zero point in quantization?
2. What is quantization scale?
3. What is the concept of quantization?

What is scale and zero point in quantization?

The scale factor and the zero-point are used to to map a floating point value to the integer grid, whose size depends on the bit-width. The scale factor is commonly represented as a floating-point number and specifies the step-size of the quantizer.

What is quantization scale?

Scale Quantization is a symmetric range mapping technique (with no zero point) which is used to map an input of range of a given range (say [A1, A2]) to a quantized range of size B bits. One example is to convert an FP32 data of a given range to INT8 data.

What is the concept of quantization?

Quantization is the process of mapping continuous infinite values to a smaller set of discrete finite values. In the context of simulation and embedded computing, it is about approximating real-world values with a digital representation that introduces limits on the precision and range of a value.