knowledge-distillation

# Knowledge Distillation: Compressing LLMs

## When to Use This Skill

Use Knowledge Distillation when you need to:
- **Compress models** from 70B → 7B while retaining 90%+ performance
- **Transfer capabilities** from proprietary models (GPT-4) to open-source (LLaMA, Mistral)
- **Reduce inference costs** by deploying smaller student models
- **Create specialized models** by distilling domain-specific knowledge
- **Improve small models** using synthetic data from large teachers

**Key Techniques**: Temperature scaling, soft targets, reverse KLD (MiniLLM), logit distillation, response distillation

**Papers**: Hinton et al. 2015 (arXiv 1503.02531), MiniLLM (arXiv 2306.08543), KD Survey (arXiv 2402.13116)

## Installation

```bash
# Standard transformers
pip install transformers datasets accelerate

# For training
pip install torch deepspeed wandb

# Optional: MiniLLM implementation
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/LMOps
cd LMOps/minillm
pip install -e .
```

## Quick Start

### Basic Knowledge Distillation

```python
import torch
import torch.nn.functional as F
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer, Trainer, TrainingArguments

# 1. Load teacher (large) and student (small) models
teacher = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    "meta-llama/Llama-2-70b-hf",  # Large teacher
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    device_map="auto"
)

student = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    "meta-llama/Llama-2-7b-hf",  # Small student
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    device_map="cuda:0"
)

tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("meta-llama/Llama-2-70b-hf")

# 2. Define distillation loss
def distillation_loss(student_logits, teacher_logits, labels, temperature=2.0, alpha=0.5):
    """
    Combine hard loss (cross-entropy) with soft loss (KL divergence).

    Args:
        temperature: Softens probability distributions (higher = softer)
        alpha: Weight for distillation loss (1-alpha for hard loss)
    """
    # Hard loss: Standard cross-entropy with true labels
    hard_loss = F.cross_entropy(student_logits.view(-1, student_logits.size(-1)), labels.view(-1))

    # Soft loss: KL divergence between student and teacher
    soft_targets = F.softmax(teacher_logits / temperature, dim=-1)
    soft_student = F.log_softmax(student_logits / temperature, dim=-1)
    soft_loss = F.kl_div(soft_student, soft_targets, reduction='batchmean') * (temperature ** 2)

    # Combined loss
    return alpha * soft_loss + (1 - alpha) * hard_loss

# 3. Training loop
for batch in dataloader:
    # Teacher forward (no grad)
    with torch.no_grad():
        teacher_outputs = teacher(**batch)
        teacher_logits = teacher_outputs.logits

    # Student forward
    student_outputs = student(**batch)
    student_logits = student_outputs.logits

    # Compute distillation loss
    loss = distillation_loss(
        student_logits,
        teacher_logits,
        batch['labels'],
        temperature=2.0,
        alpha=0.7  # 70% soft, 30% hard
    )

    # Backward and optimize
    loss.backward()
    optimizer.step()
    optimizer.zero_grad()
```

### MiniLLM (Reverse KLD)

**Source**: arXiv 2306.08543 (2024)

**Innovation**: Use reverse KLD instead of forward KLD for better generative model distillation.

```python
def reverse_kl_loss(student_logits, teacher_logits, temperature=1.0):
    """
    Reverse KL divergence: KL(Teacher || Student)
    Better for generative models than forward KL.
    """
    # Teacher distribution (target)
    p_teacher = F.softmax(teacher_logits / temperature, dim=-1)

    # Student distribution (model)
    log_p_student = F.log_softmax(student_logits / temperature, dim=-1)

    # Reverse KL: Sum over teacher, student learns to cover teacher's modes
    reverse_kl = -(p_teacher * log_p_student).sum(dim=-1).mean()

    return reverse_kl * (temperature ** 2)

# Training with MiniLLM
for batch in dataloader:
    with torch.no_grad():
        teacher_logits = teacher(**batch).logits

    student_logits = student(**batch).logits

    # Reverse KLD (better for generation)
    loss = reverse_kl_loss(student_logits, teacher_logits, temperature=1.0)

    loss.backward()
    optimizer.step()
```

**Why reverse KL?**
- **Forward KL** (standard): Student learns to match teacher's *mean*
- **Reverse KL** (MiniLLM): Student learns to *cover* all teacher's modes
- Better for diverse text generation

### Response Distillation

```python
# Generate synthetic data from teacher, train student to imitate

# 1. Generate synthetic responses from teacher
prompts = ["Explain AI:", "What is ML?", "Define NLP:"]

teacher_responses = []
for prompt in prompts:
    inputs = tokenizer(prompt, return_tensors='pt').to(teacher.device)
    outputs = teacher.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=256, do_sample=True, temperature=0.7)
    response = tokenizer.decode(outputs[0], skip_special_tokens=True)
    teacher_responses.append(response)

# 2. Train student on teacher's responses (standard fine-tuning)
train_dataset = [
    {"text": f"{prompt}\n{response}"}
    for prompt, response in zip(prompts, teacher_responses)
]

# 3. Fine-tune student
trainer = Trainer(
    model=student,
    args=TrainingArguments(output_dir="./student", num_train_epochs=3, learning_rate=2e-5),
    train_dataset=train_dataset,
)
trainer.train()
```

## Core Concepts

### 1. Temperature Scaling

**Purpose**: Soften probability distributions to expose teacher's uncertainty.

```python
# Low temperature (T=1): Sharp distribution
logits = [3.0, 2.0, 1.0]
probs_T1 = softmax(logits / 1.0)  # [0.67, 0.24, 0.09]

# High temperature (T=4): Soft distribution
probs_T4 = softmax(logits / 4.0)  # [0.42, 0.34, 0.24]

# Higher T reveals more information about relative rankings
```

**Rule**: Use T=2-5 for distillation (2 is common default).

### 2. Loss Function Components

```python
# Total loss = alpha * soft_loss + (1 - alpha) * hard_loss

# Soft loss: Learn from teacher's knowledge
soft_loss = KL(student || teacher)

# Hard loss: Lear