SmolLM2 1.7B Instruct memory requirements

1.7B parameters — 3.2 GiB of weights at FP16, 1007 MiB at Q4_K_M, and 192.0 KiB of KV cache per token on top. Solved against 22 real accelerators; 22 of them can hold it.

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Parameters

1.7B

1,711,376,384 exactly

Weights, Q4_K_M

1007 MiB

3.2 GiB unquantized

KV cache

192.0 KiB

per token · 24L × 32 KV × 64

Smallest card (Q4)

8 GB

Jetson Orin Nano Super (8GB)

Weights at each precision

Precision	Bits/weight	Weights	Source	Notes
FP16 / BF16	16.00	3.2 GiB	measured file	Unquantized. Two bytes per parameter, exactly.
Q8_0	8.51	1.7 GiB	measured file	Effectively lossless; the usual reference point for quantized quality.
Q6_K	6.57	1.3 GiB	measured file	Quality loss is hard to measure on most benchmarks.
Q5_K_M	5.73	1.1 GiB	measured file	A middle point when Q4 fits with too little room for context.
Q4_K_M	4.93	1007 MiB	measured file	The default choice for local inference — the best size/quality knee.
Q3_K_M	4.02	820 MiB	measured file	Measurable quality loss. Worth it only to make a model fit at all.

Every accelerator

Largest quant that fits with at least 4k of context, the context it leaves, and the bandwidth ceiling on decode speed. Each row links to the worked page for that pairing.

Accelerator	Memory	Bandwidth	Best quant	Max context	Ceiling
Apple M3 Ultra (512GB)	512 GB	819 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	163 tok/s
H200 141GB (SXM)	141 GB	4800 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	954 tok/s
Apple M4 Max (128GB)	128 GB	546 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	108 tok/s
H100 80GB (SXM5)	80 GB	3350 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	666 tok/s
A100 80GB (SXM)	80 GB	2039 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	405 tok/s
Jetson AGX Orin (64GB)	64 GB	204.8 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	41 tok/s
RTX 6000 Ada Generation	48 GB	960 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	191 tok/s
L40S	48 GB	864 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	172 tok/s
Apple M4 Pro (48GB)	48 GB	273 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	54 tok/s
A100 40GB (SXM)	40 GB	1555 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	309 tok/s
GeForce RTX 5090	32 GB	1792 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	356 tok/s
GeForce RTX 4090	24 GB	1008 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	200 tok/s
Radeon RX 7900 XTX	24 GB	960 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	191 tok/s
GeForce RTX 3090	24 GB	936 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	186 tok/s
Apple M4 (24GB)	24 GB	120 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	24 tok/s
GeForce RTX 5080	16 GB	960 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	191 tok/s
GeForce RTX 5070 Ti	16 GB	896 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	178 tok/s
GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER	16 GB	736 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	146 tok/s
GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER	16 GB	672 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	134 tok/s
GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB	16 GB	288 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	57 tok/s
GeForce RTX 3060 12GB	12 GB	360 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	72 tok/s
Jetson Orin Nano Super (8GB)	8 GB	102 GB/s	FP16 / BF16	8,192	20 tok/s

Questions about this model

How much VRAM does SmolLM2 1.7B Instruct need?

3.2 GiB for the weights at FP16 and 1007 MiB at Q4_K_M, from an exact count of 1,711,376,384 parameters. On top of that, the KV cache costs 192.0 KiB per token of context — 1.5 GiB at 8k and 6.0 GiB at 32k.

What is the smallest GPU that runs SmolLM2 1.7B Instruct?

Of the 22 accelerators here, the smallest that holds Q4_K_M weights is the Jetson Orin Nano Super (8GB) at 8 GB — 1007 MiB of weights against 6.0 GiB usable, leaving room for 8k tokens. For unquantized weights you need at least a Jetson Orin Nano Super (8GB).

Why is the KV cache for SmolLM2 1.7B Instruct the size it is?

Because it stores one key and one value vector per token, per layer: 24 layers × 32 KV heads × 64 dimensions × 2 (K and V) × 2 bytes = 192.0 KiB per token. This model uses full multi-head attention, so every attention head keeps its own K and V — the cache is as large as the architecture allows. None of this can be read off the parameter count.

Compare with

Method and limits. The parameter count and every architecture figure on this page are read from the model's own published config and the Hub's index over its tensor shapes, fetched 2026-08-07 — nothing here is recalled from a model's name. Weight bytes are the size of a real published file wherever one exists and the parameter count times the published llama.cpp bits-per-weight where it does not; every row says which. Speed figures are roofline bounds — memory bandwidth divided by bytes read per token — not benchmarks. Nothing on this page is written by a language model.