SmolLM 360M — Hardware Requirements & GPU Compatibility
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SmolLM-360M is Hugging Face's 360-million-parameter base language model, one of three sizes (135M, 360M, and 1.7B) in the original SmolLM family. It is a pretrained model, not instruction-tuned or chat-formatted, trained on 600 billion tokens from the curated Cosmo-Corpus dataset: Cosmopedia v2 synthetic textbooks and stories, Python-Edu educational code samples, and FineWeb-Edu deduplicated educational web text. At this size it is intended as a lightweight research and fine-tuning base rather than a ready chat assistant, and it runs comfortably on a CPU or any consumer GPU. Context length is 2,048 tokens. It is released under the Apache 2.0 license, permitting unrestricted commercial and research use, and was published in July 2024.
11.5K downloads
73 likesSpecifications
- Publisher
- Hugging Face
- Family
- SmolLM
- Parameters
- 362M
- Architecture
- LlamaForCausalLM
- Context Length
- 2,048 tokens
- Vocabulary Size
- 49,152
- Release Date
- 2024-07-14
- License
- Apache 2.0
Get Started
HuggingFace
How Much VRAM Does SmolLM 360M Need?
Select a quantization to see compatible GPUs below.
| Quantization | Bits | VRAM | + Context | File Size | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q3_K_S | 3.50 | 0.5 GB | — | 0.16 GB | 3-bit small quantization |
| Q2_K | 3.40 | 0.5 GB | — | 0.15 GB | 2-bit quantization with K-quant improvements |
| Q3_K_M | 3.90 | 0.6 GB | — | 0.18 GB | 3-bit medium quantization |
| Q4_K_M | 4.80 | 0.6 GB | — | 0.22 GB | 4-bit medium quantization — most popular sweet spot |
| Q5_K_M | 5.70 | 0.6 GB | — | 0.26 GB | 5-bit medium quantization — good quality/size tradeoff |
| Q6_K | 6.60 | 0.7 GB | — | 0.30 GB | 6-bit quantization, very good quality |
| Q8_0 | 8.00 | 0.8 GB | — | 0.36 GB | 8-bit quantization, near-lossless |
est.= calculated VRAM estimate; no published GGUF file found for that quantization yet. Other rows are verified against real community uploads.
Which GPUs Can Run SmolLM 360M?
Q4_K_M · 0.6 GBSmolLM 360M (Q4_K_M) requires 0.6 GB of VRAM to load the model weights. For comfortable inference with headroom for KV cache and system overhead, 1+ GB is recommended. 52 GPUs can run it, including NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.
Runs great
— Plenty of headroomWhich Devices Can Run SmolLM 360M?
Q4_K_M · 0.6 GB59 devices with unified memory can run SmolLM 360M, including NVIDIA DGX H100, NVIDIA DGX A100 640GB.
Runs great
— Plenty of headroomWhere to Download SmolLM 360M
Community quantizations of this model — GGUF for llama.cpp, Ollama, and LM Studio, plus AWQ/MLX variants where available.
Benchmarks
Benchmark details →Related Models
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much VRAM does SmolLM 360M need?
SmolLM 360M requires 0.6 GB of VRAM at Q4_K_M, or 1.1 GB at BF16.
VRAM = Weights + KV Cache + Overhead
Weights = 362M × 4.8 bits ÷ 8 = 0.2 GB
KV Cache + Overhead ≈ 0.4 GB (at 2K context + ~0.3 GB framework)
VRAM usage by quantization
Q4_K_M0.6 GB- What's the best quantization for SmolLM 360M?
For SmolLM 360M, Q4_K_M (0.6 GB) offers the best balance of quality and VRAM usage. Q5_K_S (0.6 GB) provides better quality if you have the VRAM. The smallest option is IQ3_XS at 0.5 GB.
VRAM requirement by quantization
IQ3_XS0.5 GBIQ3_M0.6 GBIQ4_XS0.6 GBQ4_K_M ★0.6 GBQ5_K_M0.6 GBBF161.1 GB★ Recommended — best balance of quality and VRAM usage.
- Can I run SmolLM 360M on a Mac?
SmolLM 360M requires at least 0.5 GB at IQ3_XS, which exceeds the unified memory of most consumer Macs. You would need a Mac Studio or Mac Pro with a high-memory configuration.
- Can I run SmolLM 360M locally?
Yes — SmolLM 360M can run locally on consumer hardware. At Q4_K_M quantization it needs 0.6 GB of VRAM. Popular tools include Ollama, LM Studio, and llama.cpp.
- How fast is SmolLM 360M?
At Q4_K_M, SmolLM 360M can reach ~8000 tok/s on AMD Instinct MI350X. On NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090: ~1092 tok/s. Speed depends mainly on GPU memory bandwidth. Real-world results typically within ±20%.
tok/s = (bandwidth GB/s ÷ model GB) × efficiency
Example: NVIDIA B200 → 8000 ÷ 0.6 × 0.65 = ~8667 tok/s
Estimated speed at Q4_K_M (0.6 GB)
~8667 tok/s~1092 tok/s~8667 tok/s~8000 tok/sReal-world results typically within ±20%. Speed depends on batch size, quantization kernel, and software stack.
- What's the download size of SmolLM 360M?
At Q4_K_M, the download is about 0.22 GB. The full-precision BF16 version is 0.72 GB. The smallest option (IQ3_XS) is 0.15 GB.
- Which GPUs can run SmolLM 360M?
52 consumer GPUs can run SmolLM 360M at Q4_K_M (0.6 GB). Top options include AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT, AMD Radeon RX 6800, AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT. 52 GPUs have plenty of headroom for comfortable inference.
- Which devices can run SmolLM 360M?
59 devices with unified memory can run SmolLM 360M at Q4_K_M (0.6 GB), including AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (Strix Point) Laptop, ASUS Ascent GX10, Apple iPhone 17 Pro, Asus ROG Flow Z13 (2025, Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128 GB). Apple Silicon Macs use unified memory shared between CPU and GPU, making them well-suited for local LLM inference.