HeadQ: Model-Visible Distortion and Score-Space Correction for KV-Cache Quantization

Abstract

KV-cache quantizers usually optimize storage-space reconstruction, even though attention reads keys through logits and values through attention-weighted readout. We argue that persistent cache error should be measured in model-visible coordinates. For keys, the visible object is score error modulo constant shifts; this yields HeadQ, a key-side method that stores a low-rank residual side code in a calibration-learned query basis and applies it as an additive logit correction. For values, fixed-attention readout gives an $A^2$-weighted token-distortion surrogate. Across six models, Fisher/score-space error predicts attention KL far better than raw key MSE; same-budget counterexamples, null-space interventions, query-PCA controls, and wrong-sign HeadQ falsify storage-MSE alternatives. Matched Pythia checkpoints localize the main anomaly to a small-model low-entropy route-flip boundary. In K-only WikiText-103 decode experiments with dense values, HeadQ removes roughly $84$--$94\%$ of the excess perplexity on the strongest 2-bit rows; in an auxiliary full-KV 2-bit composition, HeadQ plus an $A^2$ value policy improves all six models.