TL;DRGemma 4 models are now available for download with quantization-aware training (QAT), which reduces the size and memory footprint of the models.These open-source models retain quality better thanks to QAT compared to those that use post-training quantization (PTQ).The Gemma 4 models optimized with QAT are available in five sizes: Gemma 4 E2B, Gemma 4 E4B, Gemma 4 12B, Gemma 4 26B A4B, and Gemma 4 31B.Following Google’s launch of the laptop-grade Gemma 4 12B model earlier this week, the company is releasing new Gemma 4 model checkpoints with quantization-aware training. Quantization is necessary to reduce the amount of memory required to run lightweight models. The standard method is post-training quantization (PTQ), which quantizes the model after training, but could result in weaker performance. The latest Gemma 4 versions use quantization-aware training (QAT) instead to reduce model quality loss and accelerate decode speed, according to Google’s blog post.Google says that incorporating quantization into the training process results in checkpoints with better performance than models refined with PTQ. The compressed models run on phones and laptops well thanks to a custom mobile-quantization schema. This involves using pre-calculated settings, 2-bit compression in certain parts of the model, and vocabulary list and short-term memory compression. For the user, this results in a smaller model that consumes less system memory.