What is the GGUF format, and what do llama.cpp k-quants (Q4_K_M, Q5_K_S) actually mean?
GGUF powers most local LLM runs, and its quant names look cryptic. What matters is decoding what Q4_K_M means and why mixed-precision k-quants outperform naive uniform quantization.
Updated Sep 2026 · Grounded in real GenAI, LLM, and AI/ML engineering interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
GGUF powers most local LLM runs, and its quant names look cryptic. What matters is decoding what Q4_K_M means and why mixed-precision k-quants outperform naive uniform quantization.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.
