diff --git a/export.py b/export.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4710649
--- /dev/null
+++ b/export.py
@@ -0,0 +1,243 @@
+"""
+This script has functions and utilties for model export.
+Basically, we have a bunch of versions of the model, and we
+want to export them to .bin files to be read from and inferenced in C.
+
+Among the "input" versions of PyTorch files/models:
+- Official Llama 2 weights released by Meta
+- Huggingface weights available on the hub
+- llama2.c (this repo) trained models
+
+Among the "output" versions of .bin files:
+- v0: Legacy files of the original llama2.c repo (will eventually be DEPRECATED)
+- v1-vN: Improved .bin files with a proper header, cache alignment, etc.
+
+This script aspires to provide all of these conversions.
+"""
+import struct
+import argparse
+import torch
+import numpy as np
+
+from model import ModelArgs, Transformer
+
+# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# common utilities
+
+def serialize_fp32(file, tensor):
+    """ writes one fp32 tensor to file that is open in wb mode """
+    d = tensor.detach().cpu().view(-1).numpy().astype(np.float32)
+    b = struct.pack(f'{len(d)}f', *d)
+    file.write(b)
+
+def serialize_int8(file, tensor):
+    """ writes one int8 tensor to file that is open in wb mode """
+    d = tensor.detach().cpu().view(-1).numpy().astype(np.int8)
+    b = struct.pack(f'{len(d)}b', *d)
+    file.write(b)
+
+def quantize_q80(w, group_size):
+        """
+        takes a tensor and returns the Q8_0 quantized version
+        i.e. symmetric quantization into int8, range [-127,127]
+        """
+        assert w.numel() % group_size == 0
+        ori_shape = w.shape
+        w = w.float() # convert to float32
+        w = w.reshape(-1, group_size)
+        # find the max in each group
+        wmax = torch.abs(w).max(dim=1).values
+        # calculate the scaling factor such that float = quant * scale
+        scale = wmax / 127.0
+        # scale into range [-127, 127]
+        quant = w / scale[:,None]
+        # round to nearest integer
+        int8val = torch.round(quant).to(torch.int8)
+        # dequantize by rescaling
+        fp32val = (int8val.float() * scale[:,None]).view(-1)
+        fp32valr = fp32val.reshape(-1, group_size)
+        # calculate the max error in each group
+        err = torch.abs(fp32valr - w).max(dim=1).values
+        # find the max error across all groups
+        maxerr = err.max().item()
+        return int8val, scale, maxerr
+
+# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# legacy
+
+def legacy_export(model, filepath):
+    """ Original export of llama2.c bin files, i.e. version v0 """
+    out_file = open(filepath, 'wb')
+
+    # first write out the header
+    hidden_dim = model.layers[0].feed_forward.w1.weight.shape[0]
+    p = model.params
+    n_kv_heads = p.n_heads if p.n_kv_heads is None else p.n_kv_heads
+    header = struct.pack('iiiiiii', p.dim, hidden_dim, p.n_layers, p.n_heads,
+                                    n_kv_heads, p.vocab_size, p.max_seq_len)
+    out_file.write(header)
+
+    # next write out the embedding weights
+    serialize_fp32(out_file, model.tok_embeddings.weight)
+
+    # now all the layers
+    # attention weights
+    for layer in model.layers:
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.attention_norm.weight)
+    for layer in model.layers:
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.attention.wq.weight)
+    for layer in model.layers:
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.attention.wk.weight)
+    for layer in model.layers:
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.attention.wv.weight)
+    for layer in model.layers:
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.attention.wo.weight)
+    # ffn weights
+    for layer in model.layers:
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.ffn_norm.weight)
+    for layer in model.layers:
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.feed_forward.w1.weight)
+    for layer in model.layers:
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.feed_forward.w2.weight)
+    for layer in model.layers:
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.feed_forward.w3.weight)
+    # final rmsnorm
+    serialize_fp32(out_file, model.norm.weight)
+    # note: no need to write final classifier weights due to weight sharing
+    # freqs_cis
+    serialize_fp32(out_file, model.freqs_cos[:p.max_seq_len])
+    serialize_fp32(out_file, model.freqs_sin[:p.max_seq_len])
+
+    # write to binary file
+    out_file.close()
+    print(f"wrote {filepath}")
+
+# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# new version
+
+def version1_export(model, filepath, group_size=64):
+    """
+    Export the model weights in Q8_0 into .bin file to be read from C.
+    That is:
+    - quantize all weights to symmetric int8, in range [-127, 127]
+    - all other tensors (the rmsnorm params) are kept and exported in fp32
+    - quantization is done in groups of group_size to reduce the effects of any outliers
+    """
+    version = 1
+
+    # let's first do some validation for this export type
+    while model.params.dim % group_size != 0:
+        group_size //= 2
+        print(f"BACKOFF: reducing group size to {group_size} to fit hidden_dim")
+    weights = [
+        model.tok_embeddings.weight,
+        *[layer.attention.wq.weight for layer in model.layers],
+        *[layer.attention.wk.weight for layer in model.layers],
+        *[layer.attention.wv.weight for layer in model.layers],
+        *[layer.attention.wo.weight for layer in model.layers],
+        *[layer.feed_forward.w1.weight for layer in model.layers],
+        *[layer.feed_forward.w2.weight for layer in model.layers],
+        *[layer.feed_forward.w3.weight for layer in model.layers],
+    ]
+    for w in weights:
+        assert w.numel() % group_size == 0, f"weight {i} has numel {w.numel()}, not a multiple of group_size {group_size}"
+
+    # write
+    out_file = open(filepath, 'wb')
+    # first write out the header. the header will be 256 bytes
+    nbytes = 0
+    # 1) write magic, which will be uint32 of "ak42" in ASCII
+    out_file.write(struct.pack('I', 0x616b3432))
+    nbytes += 4
+    # 2) write version, which will be int
+    out_file.write(struct.pack('i', version))
+    nbytes += 4
+    # 3) write the params, which will be 7 ints
+    p = model.params
+    hidden_dim = model.layers[0].feed_forward.w1.weight.shape[0]
+    n_kv_heads = p.n_heads if p.n_kv_heads is None else p.n_kv_heads
+    header = struct.pack('iiiiiii', p.dim, hidden_dim, p.n_layers, p.n_heads,
+                                    n_kv_heads, p.vocab_size, p.max_seq_len)
+    out_file.write(header)
+    nbytes += 7*4
+    # 4) write some other flags
+    shared_classifier = 1 # we do share a classifier, write flag as a byte
+    out_file.write(struct.pack('B', shared_classifier))
+    nbytes += 1
+    out_file.write(struct.pack('i', group_size)) # group size used for quantization
+    nbytes += 4
+    pad = 256 - nbytes # pad the rest with zeros
+    assert pad >= 0
+    out_file.write(b'\0' * pad)
+    # now that the header is done, let's write out the model
+
+    # first let's write out all the params that we are keeping in fp32: the norms
+    for layer in model.layers: # attention norms
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.attention_norm.weight)
+    for layer in model.layers: # MLP norms
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, layer.ffn_norm.weight)
+    serialize_fp32(out_file, model.norm.weight) # final pre-classifier norm
+
+    # now let's write out all the params that we are quantizing to Q8_0
+    # note we skip classifier weights, which are shared with the embedding
+    ew = []
+    scales = []
+    for i, w in enumerate(weights):
+        # quantize this weight
+        q, s, err = quantize_q80(w, group_size)
+        # save the int8 weights to file
+        serialize_int8(out_file, q) # save the tensor in int8
+        scales.append(s)  # we'll do all the scales after all the qs
+        # logging
+        ew.append((err, w.shape))
+        print(f"{i+1}/{len(weights)} quantized {tuple(w.shape)} to Q8_0 with max error {err}")
+
+    # save the scaling factors in fp32 here
+    # this is done to keep all the weights contiquous, making pointer arithmetic easier in C
+    for s in scales:
+        serialize_fp32(out_file, s)
+
+    # print the highest error across all weights, should be very small, e.g. O(~0.001)
+    ew.sort(reverse=True)
+    print(f"max quantization group error across all weights: {ew[0][0]}")
+
+    # write to binary file
+    out_file.close()
+    print(f"wrote {filepath}")
+
+# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# API entrypoint
+
+def model_export(model, filepath, version):
+    if version == 0:
+        legacy_export(model, filepath)
+    elif version == 1:
+        version1_export(model, filepath)
+    else:
+        raise ValueError(f"unknown version {version}")
+
+# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# CLI entrypoint
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+
+    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
+    parser.add_argument("filepath", type=str, help="the output filepath")
+    parser.add_argument("--checkpoint", default="", type=str, help="model checkpoint, .pt file")
+    parser.add_argument("--version", default=0, type=int, help="the version to export with")
+    args = parser.parse_args()
+
+    # load the provided model checkpoint
+    checkpoint_dict = torch.load(args.checkpoint, map_location='cpu')
+    gptconf = ModelArgs(**checkpoint_dict['model_args'])
+    model = Transformer(gptconf)
+    state_dict = checkpoint_dict['model']
+    unwanted_prefix = '_orig_mod.'
+    for k,v in list(state_dict.items()):
+        if k.startswith(unwanted_prefix):
+            state_dict[k[len(unwanted_prefix):]] = state_dict.pop(k)
+    model.load_state_dict(state_dict, strict=False)
+    model.eval()
+
+    # export
+    model_export(model, args.filepath, args.version)
diff --git a/model.py b/model.py
index c8c82a9..044712f 100644
--- a/model.py
+++ b/model.py
@@ -338,55 +338,3 @@ class Transformer(nn.Module):
             idx = torch.cat((idx, idx_next), dim=1)
 
         return idx
-
-    def export(self, filepath='model.bin'):
-        """export the model weights in fp32 into .bin file to be read from C"""
-        f = open(filepath, 'wb')
-
-        def serialize(t):
-            d = t.detach().cpu().view(-1).numpy().astype(np.float32)
-            b = struct.pack(f'{len(d)}f', *d)
-            f.write(b)
-
-        # first write out the header
-        hidden_dim = self.layers[0].feed_forward.w1.weight.shape[0]
-        p = self.params
-        n_kv_heads = p.n_heads if p.n_kv_heads is None else p.n_kv_heads
-        header = struct.pack('iiiiiii', p.dim, hidden_dim, p.n_layers, p.n_heads,
-                                       n_kv_heads, p.vocab_size, p.max_seq_len)
-        f.write(header)
-
-        # next write out the embedding weights
-        serialize(self.tok_embeddings.weight)
-
-        # now all the layers
-        # attention weights
-        for layer in self.layers:
-            serialize(layer.attention_norm.weight)
-        for layer in self.layers:
-            serialize(layer.attention.wq.weight)
-        for layer in self.layers:
-            serialize(layer.attention.wk.weight)
-        for layer in self.layers:
-            serialize(layer.attention.wv.weight)
-        for layer in self.layers:
-            serialize(layer.attention.wo.weight)
-        # ffn weights
-        for layer in self.layers:
-            serialize(layer.ffn_norm.weight)
-        for layer in self.layers:
-            serialize(layer.feed_forward.w1.weight)
-        for layer in self.layers:
-            serialize(layer.feed_forward.w2.weight)
-        for layer in self.layers:
-            serialize(layer.feed_forward.w3.weight)
-        # final rmsnorm
-        serialize(self.norm.weight)
-        # note: no need to write final classifier weights due to weight sharing
-        # freqs_cis
-        serialize(self.freqs_cos[:p.max_seq_len])
-        serialize(self.freqs_sin[:p.max_seq_len])
-
-        # write to binary file
-        f.close()
-        print(f"wrote {filepath}")
diff --git a/train.py b/train.py
index b1972dc..e958538 100644
--- a/train.py
+++ b/train.py
@@ -29,6 +29,7 @@ from torch.distributed import destroy_process_group, init_process_group
 from torch.nn.parallel import DistributedDataParallel as DDP
 
 from tinystories import Task
+from export import model_export
 
 # -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # I/O
@@ -287,7 +288,7 @@ while True:
                 }
                 print(f"saving checkpoint to {out_dir}")
                 torch.save(checkpoint, os.path.join(out_dir, "ckpt.pt"))
-                raw_model.export(os.path.join(out_dir, "model.bin"))
+                model_export(raw_model, os.path.join(out_dir, "model.bin"), version=0)
     if iter_num == 0 and eval_only:
         break