Question 1

How much VRAM does granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct need?

Accepted Answer

granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct (1B) requires approximately 2.9831268310546872 GB of VRAM at full precision (FP16), 1.5 GB at 8-bit quantization (Q8), and 0.7 GB at 4-bit quantization (Q4). The actual VRAM usage may be slightly higher due to KV cache and runtime overhead.

Question 2

What GPUs can run granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct?

Accepted Answer

We have 10 compatible GPUs indexed for granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct, including K80, L4, A40, A100 40GB, A10G and 5 more. Compatibility is determined by whether the GPU's VRAM can fit the model's memory footprint, potentially using quantization to reduce memory usage.

Question 3

What is the cheapest GPU to run granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct?

Accepted Answer

The cheapest GPU to run granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct in the cloud is the K80 at $0.18/hr. Other affordable options include L4 ($0.20/hr) and A40 ($0.44/hr). Prices reflect the lowest on-demand rate across cloud providers.

Question 4

Can granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct run on consumer hardware?

Accepted Answer

Yes, granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct can run on consumer GPUs like the RTX A6000 (48 GB VRAM) at full precision (FP16).

Question 5

What quantization options are available for granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct?

Accepted Answer

granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct supports the following quantization levels: FP16 (full precision): ~2.9831268310546872 GB, Q8 (8-bit): ~1.5 GB, Q6 (6-bit): ~1.1 GB, Q4 (4-bit): ~0.7 GB. Lower quantization reduces VRAM usage at the cost of some quality loss. Q8 offers a good balance between quality and memory savings, while Q4 provides maximum compression. As a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model with 32 experts (8 active), granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct has a larger total weight size but only activates a subset of parameters per token, which can affect effective memory usage during inference.

GPU	VRAM	Best Quant	From	Rent
K80	12 GB	FP16	$0.18/hr
L4	24 GB	FP16	$0.20/hr
A40	48 GB	FP16	$0.44/hr	Rent
A100 40GB	40 GB	FP16	$0.93/hr	Rent
A10G	24 GB	FP16	$1.01/hr
RTX A6000	48 GB	FP16	$1.09/hr
A10	24 GB	FP16	$1.29/hr
A100 80GB PCIe	80 GB	FP16	$1.39/hr	Rent
A100 80GB	80 GB	FP16	$1.39/hr	Rent
H100 MEGA	80 GB	FP16	$1.80/hr	Rent

granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct

VRAM Requirements

Compatible GPUs

granite-3.1-1b-a400m-instruct FAQ