llama.cpp


Roadmap / Project status / Manifesto / ggml
Inference of Meta’s LLaMA model (and others) in pure C/C++
Recent API changes
Hot topics
Description
The main goal of llama.cpp
is to enable LLM inference with minimal setup and state-of-the-art performance on a wide
range of hardware - locally and in the cloud.
- Plain C/C++ implementation without any dependencies
- Apple silicon is a first-class citizen - optimized via ARM NEON, Accelerate and Metal frameworks
- AVX, AVX2, AVX512 and AMX support for x86 architectures
- 1.5-bit, 2-bit, 3-bit, 4-bit, 5-bit, 6-bit, and 8-bit integer quantization for faster inference and reduced memory use
- Custom CUDA kernels for running LLMs on NVIDIA GPUs (support for AMD GPUs via HIP and Moore Threads GPUs via MUSA)
- Vulkan and SYCL backend support
- CPU+GPU hybrid inference to partially accelerate models larger than the total VRAM capacity
The llama.cpp
project is the main playground for developing new features for the ggml library.
Models
Typically finetunes of the base models below are supported as well.
Instructions for adding support for new models: HOWTO-add-model.md
Text-only
Multimodal
Bindings
UIs
(to have a project listed here, it should clearly state that it depends on llama.cpp
)
Tools
- akx/ggify – download PyTorch models from HuggingFace Hub and convert them to GGML
- akx/ollama-dl – download models from the Ollama library to be used directly with llama.cpp
- crashr/gppm – launch llama.cpp instances utilizing NVIDIA Tesla P40 or P100 GPUs with reduced idle power consumption
- gpustack/gguf-parser - review/check the GGUF file and estimate the memory usage
- Styled Lines (proprietary licensed, async wrapper of inference part for game development in Unity3d with pre-built Mobile and Web platform wrappers and a model example)
Infrastructure
- Paddler - Stateful load balancer custom-tailored for llama.cpp
- GPUStack - Manage GPU clusters for running LLMs
- llama_cpp_canister - llama.cpp as a smart contract on the Internet Computer, using WebAssembly
- llama-swap - transparent proxy that adds automatic model switching with llama-server
- Kalavai - Crowdsource end to end LLM deployment at any scale
- llmaz - ☸️ Easy, advanced inference platform for large language models on Kubernetes.
Games
- Lucy’s Labyrinth - A simple maze game where agents controlled by an AI model will try to trick you.
Supported backends
Building the project
The main product of this project is the llama
library. Its C-style interface can be found in include/llama.h.
The project also includes many example programs and tools using the llama
library. The examples range from simple, minimal code snippets to sophisticated sub-projects such as an OpenAI-compatible HTTP server. Possible methods for obtaining the binaries:
Obtaining and quantizing models
The Hugging Face platform hosts a number of LLMs compatible with llama.cpp
:
You can either manually download the GGUF file or directly use any llama.cpp
-compatible models from Hugging Face or other model hosting sites, such as ModelScope, by using this CLI argument: -hf <user>/<model>[:quant]
.
By default, the CLI would download from Hugging Face, you can switch to other options with the environment variable MODEL_ENDPOINT
. For example, you may opt to downloading model checkpoints from ModelScope or other model sharing communities by setting the environment variable, e.g. MODEL_ENDPOINT=https://www.modelscope.cn/
.
After downloading a model, use the CLI tools to run it locally - see below.
llama.cpp
requires the model to be stored in the GGUF file format. Models in other data formats can be converted to GGUF using the convert_*.py
Python scripts in this repo.
The Hugging Face platform provides a variety of online tools for converting, quantizing and hosting models with llama.cpp
:
To learn more about model quantization, read this documentation
Run in conversation mode
Models with a built-in chat template will automatically activate conversation mode. If this doesn’t occur, you can manually enable it by adding -cnv
and specifying a suitable chat template with --chat-template NAME
llama-cli -m model.gguf
# > hi, who are you?
# Hi there! I'm your helpful assistant! I'm an AI-powered chatbot designed to assist and provide information to users like you. I'm here to help answer your questions, provide guidance, and offer support on a wide range of topics. I'm a friendly and knowledgeable AI, and I'm always happy to help with anything you need. What's on your mind, and how can I assist you today?
#
# > what is 1+1?
# Easy peasy! The answer to 1+1 is... 2!
Run in conversation mode with custom chat template
# use the "chatml" template (use -h to see the list of supported templates)
llama-cli -m model.gguf -cnv --chat-template chatml
# use a custom template
llama-cli -m model.gguf -cnv --in-prefix 'User: ' --reverse-prompt 'User:'
Run simple text completion
To disable conversation mode explicitly, use -no-cnv
llama-cli -m model.gguf -p "I believe the meaning of life is" -n 128 -no-cnv
# I believe the meaning of life is to find your own truth and to live in accordance with it. For me, this means being true to myself and following my passions, even if they don't align with societal expectations. I think that's what I love about yoga – it's not just a physical practice, but a spiritual one too. It's about connecting with yourself, listening to your inner voice, and honoring your own unique journey.
Constrain the output with a custom grammar
llama-cli -m model.gguf -n 256 --grammar-file grammars/json.gbnf -p 'Request: schedule a call at 8pm; Command:'
# {"appointmentTime": "8pm", "appointmentDetails": "schedule a a call"}
The grammars/ folder contains a handful of sample grammars. To write your own, check out the GBNF Guide.
For authoring more complex JSON grammars, check out https://grammar.intrinsiclabs.ai/
A lightweight, OpenAI API compatible, HTTP server for serving LLMs.
Start a local HTTP server with default configuration on port 8080
llama-server -m model.gguf --port 8080
# Basic web UI can be accessed via browser: http://localhost:8080
# Chat completion endpoint: http://localhost:8080/v1/chat/completions
Support multiple-users and parallel decoding
# up to 4 concurrent requests, each with 4096 max context
llama-server -m model.gguf -c 16384 -np 4
Enable speculative decoding
# the draft.gguf model should be a small variant of the target model.gguf
llama-server -m model.gguf -md draft.gguf
Serve an embedding model
# use the /embedding endpoint
llama-server -m model.gguf --embedding --pooling cls -ub 8192
Serve a reranking model
# use the /reranking endpoint
llama-server -m model.gguf --reranking
Constrain all outputs with a grammar
# custom grammar
llama-server -m model.gguf --grammar-file grammar.gbnf
# JSON
llama-server -m model.gguf --grammar-file grammars/json.gbnf
A tool for measuring the perplexity ^1 (and other quality metrics) of a model over a given text.
Measure the perplexity over a text file
llama-perplexity -m model.gguf -f file.txt
# [1]15.2701,[2]5.4007,[3]5.3073,[4]6.2965,[5]5.8940,[6]5.6096,[7]5.7942,[8]4.9297, ...
# Final estimate: PPL = 5.4007 +/- 0.67339
Measure KL divergence
# TODO
Run default benchmark
llama-bench -m model.gguf
# Output:
# | model | size | params | backend | threads | test | t/s |
# | ------------------- | ---------: | ---------: | ---------- | ------: | ------------: | -------------------: |
# | qwen2 1.5B Q4_0 | 885.97 MiB | 1.54 B | Metal,BLAS | 16 | pp512 | 5765.41 ± 20.55 |
# | qwen2 1.5B Q4_0 | 885.97 MiB | 1.54 B | Metal,BLAS | 16 | tg128 | 197.71 ± 0.81 |
#
# build: 3e0ba0e60 (4229)
A comprehensive example for running llama.cpp
models. Useful for inferencing. Used with RamaLama ^3.
Run a model with a specific prompt (by default it's pulled from Ollama registry)
llama-run granite-code
A minimal example for implementing apps with llama.cpp
. Useful for developers.
Basic text completion
llama-simple -m model.gguf
# Hello my name is Kaitlyn and I am a 16 year old girl. I am a junior in high school and I am currently taking a class called "The Art of
Contributing
- Contributors can open PRs
- Collaborators can push to branches in the
llama.cpp
repo and merge PRs into the master
branch
- Collaborators will be invited based on contributions
- Any help with managing issues, PRs and projects is very appreciated!
- See good first issues for tasks suitable for first contributions
- Read the CONTRIBUTING.md for more information
- Make sure to read this: Inference at the edge
- A bit of backstory for those who are interested: Changelog podcast
Other documentation
Development documentation
Seminal papers and background on the models
If your issue is with model generation quality, then please at least scan the following links and papers to understand the limitations of LLaMA models. This is especially important when choosing an appropriate model size and appreciating both the significant and subtle differences between LLaMA models and ChatGPT:
- LLaMA:
- GPT-3
- GPT-3.5 / InstructGPT / ChatGPT:
XCFramework
The XCFramework is a precompiled version of the library for iOS, visionOS, tvOS,
and macOS. It can be used in Swift projects without the need to compile the
library from source. For example:
// swift-tools-version: 5.10
// The swift-tools-version declares the minimum version of Swift required to build this package.
import PackageDescription
let package = Package(
name: "MyLlamaPackage",
targets: [
.executableTarget(
name: "MyLlamaPackage",
dependencies: [
"LlamaFramework"
]),
.binaryTarget(
name: "LlamaFramework",
url: "https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/releases/download/b5046/llama-b5046-xcframework.zip",
checksum: "c19be78b5f00d8d29a25da41042cb7afa094cbf6280a225abe614b03b20029ab"
)
]
)
The above example is using an intermediate build b5046
of the library. This can be modified
to use a different version by changing the URL and checksum.
Completions
Command-line completion is available for some environments.
Bash Completion
$ build/bin/llama-cli --completion-bash > ~/.llama-completion.bash
$ source ~/.llama-completion.bash
Optionally this can be added to your .bashrc
or .bash_profile
to load it
automatically. For example:
$ echo "source ~/.llama-completion.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
Dependencies
- yhirose/cpp-httplib - Single-header HTTP server, used by
llama-server
- MIT license
- stb-image - Single-header image format decoder, used by multimodal subsystem - Public domain
- nlohmann/json - Single-header JSON library, used by various tools/examples - MIT License
- minja - Minimal Jinja parser in C++, used by various tools/examples - MIT License
- linenoise.cpp - C++ library that provides readline-like line editing capabilities, used by
llama-run
- BSD 2-Clause License
- curl - Client-side URL transfer library, used by various tools/examples - CURL License
- miniaudio.h - Single-header audio format decoder, used by multimodal subsystem - Public domain
llama.cpp
Roadmap / Project status / Manifesto / ggml
Inference of Meta’s LLaMA model (and others) in pure C/C++
Recent API changes
libllama
APIllama-server
REST APIHot topics
llama-server
: #12898 | documentationllama-mtmd-cli
is introduced to replacellava-cli
,minicpmv-cli
,gemma3-cli
(#13012) andqwen2vl-cli
(#13141),libllava
will be deprecatedllama-server
https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/pull/9639Description
The main goal of
llama.cpp
is to enable LLM inference with minimal setup and state-of-the-art performance on a wide range of hardware - locally and in the cloud.The
llama.cpp
project is the main playground for developing new features for the ggml library.Models
Typically finetunes of the base models below are supported as well.
Instructions for adding support for new models: HOWTO-add-model.md
Text-only
Multimodal
Bindings
UIs
(to have a project listed here, it should clearly state that it depends on
llama.cpp
)Tools
Infrastructure
Games
Supported backends
Building the project
The main product of this project is the
llama
library. Its C-style interface can be found in include/llama.h. The project also includes many example programs and tools using thellama
library. The examples range from simple, minimal code snippets to sophisticated sub-projects such as an OpenAI-compatible HTTP server. Possible methods for obtaining the binaries:llama.cpp
via brew, flox or nixObtaining and quantizing models
The Hugging Face platform hosts a number of LLMs compatible with
llama.cpp
:You can either manually download the GGUF file or directly use any
llama.cpp
-compatible models from Hugging Face or other model hosting sites, such as ModelScope, by using this CLI argument:-hf <user>/<model>[:quant]
.By default, the CLI would download from Hugging Face, you can switch to other options with the environment variable
MODEL_ENDPOINT
. For example, you may opt to downloading model checkpoints from ModelScope or other model sharing communities by setting the environment variable, e.g.MODEL_ENDPOINT=https://www.modelscope.cn/
.After downloading a model, use the CLI tools to run it locally - see below.
llama.cpp
requires the model to be stored in the GGUF file format. Models in other data formats can be converted to GGUF using theconvert_*.py
Python scripts in this repo.The Hugging Face platform provides a variety of online tools for converting, quantizing and hosting models with
llama.cpp
:llama.cpp
in the cloud (more info: https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/discussions/9669)To learn more about model quantization, read this documentation
llama-cli
A CLI tool for accessing and experimenting with most of
llama.cpp
‘s functionality.Run in conversation mode
Models with a built-in chat template will automatically activate conversation mode. If this doesn’t occur, you can manually enable it by adding
-cnv
and specifying a suitable chat template with--chat-template NAME
Run in conversation mode with custom chat template
Run simple text completion
To disable conversation mode explicitly, use
-no-cnv
Constrain the output with a custom grammar
The grammars/ folder contains a handful of sample grammars. To write your own, check out the GBNF Guide.
For authoring more complex JSON grammars, check out https://grammar.intrinsiclabs.ai/
llama-server
A lightweight, OpenAI API compatible, HTTP server for serving LLMs.
Start a local HTTP server with default configuration on port 8080
Support multiple-users and parallel decoding
Enable speculative decoding
Serve an embedding model
Serve a reranking model
Constrain all outputs with a grammar
llama-perplexity
A tool for measuring the perplexity ^1 (and other quality metrics) of a model over a given text.
Measure the perplexity over a text file
Measure KL divergence
llama-bench
Benchmark the performance of the inference for various parameters.
Run default benchmark
llama-run
A comprehensive example for running
llama.cpp
models. Useful for inferencing. Used with RamaLama ^3.Run a model with a specific prompt (by default it's pulled from Ollama registry)
llama-simple
A minimal example for implementing apps with
llama.cpp
. Useful for developers.Basic text completion
Contributing
llama.cpp
repo and merge PRs into themaster
branchOther documentation
Development documentation
Seminal papers and background on the models
If your issue is with model generation quality, then please at least scan the following links and papers to understand the limitations of LLaMA models. This is especially important when choosing an appropriate model size and appreciating both the significant and subtle differences between LLaMA models and ChatGPT:
XCFramework
The XCFramework is a precompiled version of the library for iOS, visionOS, tvOS, and macOS. It can be used in Swift projects without the need to compile the library from source. For example:
The above example is using an intermediate build
b5046
of the library. This can be modified to use a different version by changing the URL and checksum.Completions
Command-line completion is available for some environments.
Bash Completion
Optionally this can be added to your
.bashrc
or.bash_profile
to load it automatically. For example:Dependencies
llama-server
- MIT licensellama-run
- BSD 2-Clause License