Try it out via this [demo](https://demo-bitnet-h0h8hcfqeqhrf5gf.canadacentral-01.azurewebsites.net/), or build and run it on your own [CPU](https://github.com/microsoft/BitNet?tab=readme-ov-file#build-from-source) or [GPU](https://github.com/microsoft/BitNet/blob/main/gpu/README.md).
bitnet.cpp is the official inference framework for 1-bit LLMs (e.g., BitNet b1.58). It offers a suite of optimized kernels, that support **fast** and **lossless** inference of 1.58-bit models on CPU and GPU (NPU support will coming next).
The first release of bitnet.cpp is to support inference on CPUs. bitnet.cpp achieves speedups of **1.37x** to **5.07x** on ARM CPUs, with larger models experiencing greater performance gains. Additionally, it reduces energy consumption by **55.4%** to **70.0%**, further boosting overall efficiency. On x86 CPUs, speedups range from **2.37x** to **6.17x** with energy reductions between **71.9%** to **82.2%**. Furthermore, bitnet.cpp can run a 100B BitNet b1.58 model on a single CPU, achieving speeds comparable to human reading (5-7 tokens per second), significantly enhancing the potential for running LLMs on local devices. Please refer to the [technical report](https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16144) for more details.
**Latest optimization** introduces parallel kernel implementations with configurable tiling and embedding quantization support, achieving **1.15x to 2.1x** additional speedup over the original implementation across different hardware platforms and workloads. For detailed technical information, see the [optimization guide](src/README.md).
This project is based on the [llama.cpp](https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp) framework. We would like to thank all the authors for their contributions to the open-source community. Also, bitnet.cpp's kernels are built on top of the Lookup Table methodologies pioneered in [T-MAC](https://github.com/microsoft/T-MAC/). For inference of general low-bit LLMs beyond ternary models, we recommend using T-MAC.
❗️**We use existing 1-bit LLMs available on [Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/) to demonstrate the inference capabilities of bitnet.cpp. We hope the release of bitnet.cpp will inspire the development of 1-bit LLMs in large-scale settings in terms of model size and training tokens.**
- For Windows users, install [Visual Studio 2022](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/). In the installer, toggle on at least the following options(this also automatically installs the required additional tools like CMake):
- Desktop-development with C++
- C++-CMake Tools for Windows
- Git for Windows
- C++-Clang Compiler for Windows
- MS-Build Support for LLVM-Toolset (clang)
- For Debian/Ubuntu users, you can download with [Automatic installation script](https://apt.llvm.org/)
> If you are using Windows, please remember to always use a Developer Command Prompt / PowerShell for VS2022 for the following commands. Please refer to the FAQs below if you see any issues.
This command would run the inference benchmark using the model located at `/path/to/model`, generating 200 tokens from a 256 token prompt, utilizing 4 threads.
For the model layout that do not supported by any public model, we provide scripts to generate a dummy model with the given model layout, and run the benchmark on your machine:
# Run benchmark with the generated model, use -m to specify the model path, -p to specify the prompt processed, -n to specify the number of token to generate
#### Q1: The build dies with errors building llama.cpp due to issues with std::chrono in log.cpp?
**A:**
This is an issue introduced in recent version of llama.cpp. Please refer to this [commit](https://github.com/tinglou/llama.cpp/commit/4e3db1e3d78cc1bcd22bcb3af54bd2a4628dd323) in the [discussion](https://github.com/abetlen/llama-cpp-python/issues/1942) to fix this issue.
#### Q2: How to build with clang in conda environment on windows?
**A:**
Before building the project, verify your clang installation and access to Visual Studio tools by running:
```
clang -v
```
This command checks that you are using the correct version of clang and that the Visual Studio tools are available. If you see an error message such as:
```
'clang' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
```
It indicates that your command line window is not properly initialized for Visual Studio tools.
