Model reference · open weights

granite-4.0

LLMs ibm-granite Text gen 2 builds Open weights 17k dl/mo

granite-4.0 is an open-weight language model from IBM. granite-4.0-1b-base (BF16) weighs 3.3 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 3060 12 GB.

  • Granite-4.0-350M is a lightweight text-generation model developed by IBM with 352M parameters.
  • It is designed for on-device deployments and research use cases, supporting tasks such as summarization, question-answering, and tool calling.
  • The model features a 32,768 token context length, supports twelve languages including English and Chinese, and is released under the Apache 2.0 license.

Summary of the ibm-granite/granite-4.0-350m model card, 2026-10-01. The estimate below is for another build of the family.

What it is

Released byIBM
Released2025-10-07
Parameters352M
VRAM3.3 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for granite-4.0-1b-base (BF16)

3.3 GBweights, file size
82 MBcache per 1K tokens
599 MBruntime overhead, at least
131,072 tokenscontext max
CardRequests at onceContext maxMemory
8K each32K each
RTX 3060 12 GB11292K11.6 GB
RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB174all 128K15.4 GB
RTX 3090 24 GB297all 128K23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GB297all 128K23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GB4010all 128K31.0 GB
L40S 48 GB5914all 128K44.0 GB
A100 80 GB11027all 128K78.2 GB
H100 80 GB10526all 128K78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB12832all 128K93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified14937all 128K107 GB
H200 141 GB19448all 128K138 GB
B200 180 GB25162all 128K176 GB
Memory needed at each load
Requests at once8K tokens each32K tokens each
14.5 GB6.5 GB
57.2 GB17.3 GB
89.2 GB25.3 GB
1614.6 GB46.8 GB
3225.3 GB89.8 GB
6446.8 GB176 GB

One card, with vLLM's small-card settings.

Builds

Sizes, precisions & builds

BuildParamsPrecisionWeightsSmallest setup
granite-4.0-350m ↗ 352MBF16 705 MBRTX 3060 12 GB
granite-4.0-1b-base (above) ↗ 1.6BBF16 3.3 GBRTX 3060 12 GB

From the model card

What IBM says about granite-4.0

Read the model card

Model Summary: Granite-4.0-350M is a lightweight instruct model finetuned from Granite-4.0-350M-Base using a combination of open source instruction datasets with permissive license and internally collected synthetic datasets. This model is developed using a diverse set of techniques including supervised finetuning, reinforcement learning, and model merging.

Supported Languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, Czech, Italian, Korean, Dutch, and Chinese. Users may fine-tune Granite 4.0 Nano models to support languages beyond those included in this list.

Intended use: Granite 4.0 Nano instruct models feature strong instruction following capabilities bringing advanced AI capabilities within reach for on-device deployments and research use cases. Additionally, their compact size makes them well-suited for fine-tuning on specialized domains without requiring massive compute resources.

Capabilities

  • Summarization
  • Text classification
  • Text extraction
  • Question-answering
  • Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • Code related tasks
  • Function-calling tasks
  • Multilingual dialog use cases
  • Fill-In-the-Middle (FIM) code completions

Generation: This is a simple example of how to use Granite-4.0-350M model.

Install the following libraries:

pip install torch torchvision torchaudio
pip install accelerate
pip install transformers

Then, copy the snippet from the section that is relevant for your use case.

import torch
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer

device = "cuda"
model_path = "ibm-granite/granite-4.0-350M"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_path)
# drop device_map if running on CPU
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(model_path, device_map=device)
model.eval()
# change input text as desired
chat = [
    { "role": "user", "content": "Please list one IBM Research laboratory located in the United States. You should only output its name and location." },
]
chat = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(chat, tokenize=False, add_generation_prompt=True)
# tokenize the text
input_tokens = tokenizer(chat, return_tensors="pt").to(device)
# generate output tokens
output = model.generate(**input_tokens,
                        max_new_tokens=100)
# decode output tokens into text
output = tokenizer.batch_decode(output)
# print output
print(output[0])

Expected output:

Tool-calling: Granite-4.0-350M comes with enhanced tool calling capabilities, enabling seamless integration with external functions and APIs. To define a list of tools please follow OpenAI's function definition schema.

This is an example of how to use Granite-4.0-350M model tool-calling ability:

import torch
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer

device = "cuda"
model_path = "ibm-granite/granite-4.0-350M"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_path)
# drop device_map if running on CPU
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(model_path, device_map=device)
model.eval()

tools = [
    {
        "type": "function",
        "function": {
            "name": "get_current_weather",
            "description": "Get the current weather for a specified city.",
            "parameters": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                    "city": {
                        "type": "string",
                        "description": "Name of the city"
                    }
                },
                "required": ["city"]
            }
        }
    }
]

# change input text as desired
chat = [
    { "role": "user", "content": "What's the weather like in Boston right now?" },
]
chat = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(chat, \
                                     tokenize=False, \
                                     tools=tools, \
                                     add_generation_prompt=True)
# tokenize the text
input_tokens = tokenizer(chat, return_tensors="pt").to(device)
# generate output tokens
output = model.generate(**input_tokens,
                        max_new_tokens=100)
# decode output tokens into text
output = tokenizer.batch_decode(output)
# print output
print(output[0])

Expected output:


You are provided with function signatures within  XML tags:
{"type": "function", "function": {"name": "get_current_weather", "description": "Get the current weather for a specified city.", "parameters": {"type": "object", "properties": {"city": {"type": "string", "description": "Name of the city"}}, "required": ["city"]}}}

For each tool call, return a json object with function name and arguments within  XML tags:
{"name": , "arguments": }
{"name": "get_current_weather", "arguments": {"city": "Boston"}}

Evaluation Results:

General Tasks
Alignment Tasks
Math Tasks
Code Tasks
Tool Calling Tasks
Multilingual Tasks
Safety

Model Architecture:

Granite-4.0-350M baseline is based on a decoder-only dense transformer architecture. Core components of this architecture are: GQA, MLP with SwiGLU, RMSNorm, and shared input/output embeddings.

Training Data: Overall, our SFT data is largely comprised of three key sources: (1) publicly available datasets with permissive license, (2) internal synthetic data targeting specific capabilities, and (3) a select set of human-curated data.

Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.

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