Model reference · open weights
Meta-Llama-3 is an open-weight language model from NousResearch. Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct (BF16) weighs 16.1 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is 2× RTX 3060 12 GB.
Summary of the NousResearch/Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct model card, 2026-10-01
What it is
| Released by | NousResearch |
|---|---|
| Released | 2024-04-18 |
| Parameters | 8.0B |
| VRAM | 16.1 GB for the weights |
What it runs on
| Card | Requests at once | Context max | Memory |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8K each | |||
| RTX 3060 12 GB … RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB 2 smaller cards | — | — | |
| RTX 3090 24 GB | 6 | all 8K | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 4090 24 GB | 6 | all 8K | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 5090 32 GB | 13 | all 8K | 31.0 GB |
| L40S 48 GB | 25 | all 8K | 44.0 GB |
| A100 80 GB | 57 | all 8K | 78.2 GB |
| H100 80 GB | 53 | all 8K | 78.1 GB |
| RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB | 67 | all 8K | 93.8 GB |
| DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified | 80 | all 8K | 107 GB |
| H200 141 GB | 109 | all 8K | 138 GB |
| B200 180 GB | 143 | all 8K | 176 GB |
| 2× RTX 3060 12 GB tensor parallel | 5 | all 8K | 11.6 GB a card |
| 2× RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB tensor parallel | 12 | all 8K | 15.4 GB a card |
| 2× RTX 4090 24 GB tensor parallel | 27 | all 8K | 23.4 GB a card |
| 2× RTX 3090 24 GB tensor parallel | 27 | all 8K | 23.4 GB a card |
| Requests at once | 8K tokens each |
|---|---|
| 1 | 17.9 GB |
| 5 | 22.2 GB |
| 8 | 25.4 GB |
| 16 | 34.0 GB |
| 32 | 51.2 GB |
| 64 | 85.5 GB |
One card, with vLLM's small-card settings.
Builds
| Build | Params | Precision | Weights | Smallest setup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct (above) ↗ | 8.0B | BF16 | 16.1 GB | 2× RTX 3060 12 GB |
| Meta-Llama-3-70B-Instruct ↗ | 70.6B | BF16 | 141 GB | 4× L40S 48 GB |
From the model card
Meta developed and released the Meta Llama 3 family of large language models (LLMs), a collection of pretrained and instruction tuned generative text models in 8 and 70B sizes. The Llama 3 instruction tuned models are optimized for dialogue use cases and outperform many of the available open source chat models on common industry benchmarks. Further, in developing these models, we took great care to optimize helpfulness and safety.
Model developers Meta
Variations Llama 3 comes in two sizes — 8B and 70B parameters — in pre-trained and instruction tuned variants.
Input Models input text only.
Output Models generate text and code only.
Model Architecture Llama 3 is an auto-regressive language model that uses an optimized transformer architecture. The tuned versions use supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF) to align with human preferences for helpfulness and safety.
Llama 3 family of models. Token counts refer to pretraining data only. Both the 8 and 70B versions use Grouped-Query Attention (GQA) for improved inference scalability.
Model Release Date April 18, 2024.
Status This is a static model trained on an offline dataset. Future versions of the tuned models will be released as we improve model safety with community feedback.
License A custom commercial license is available at: https://llama.meta.com/llama3/license
Where to send questions or comments about the model Instructions on how to provide feedback or comments on the model can be found in the model README. For more technical information about generation parameters and recipes for how to use Llama 3 in applications, please go here.
Intended Use Cases Llama 3 is intended for commercial and research use in English. Instruction tuned models are intended for assistant-like chat, whereas pretrained models can be adapted for a variety of natural language generation tasks.
Out-of-scope Use in any manner that violates applicable laws or regulations (including trade compliance laws). Use in any other way that is prohibited by the Acceptable Use Policy and Llama 3 Community License. Use in languages other than English**.
**Note: Developers may fine-tune Llama 3 models for languages beyond English provided they comply with the Llama 3 Community License and the Acceptable Use Policy.
This repository contains two versions of Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct, for use with transformers and with the original llama3 codebase.
You can run conversational inference using the Transformers pipeline abstraction, or by leveraging the Auto classes with the generate() function. Let's see examples of both.
import transformers
import torch
model_id = "meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct"
pipeline = transformers.pipeline(
"text-generation",
model=model_id,
model_kwargs={"torch_dtype": torch.bfloat16},
device_map="auto",
)
messages = [
{"role": "system", "content": "You are a pirate chatbot who always responds in pirate speak!"},
{"role": "user", "content": "Who are you?"},
]
prompt = pipeline.tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
messages,
tokenize=False,
add_generation_prompt=True
)
terminators = [
pipeline.tokenizer.eos_token_id,
pipeline.tokenizer.convert_tokens_to_ids("")
]
outputs = pipeline(
prompt,
max_new_tokens=256,
eos_token_id=terminators,
do_sample=True,
temperature=0.6,
top_p=0.9,
)
print(outputs[0]["generated_text"][len(prompt):])
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM
import torch
model_id = "meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
model_id,
torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,
device_map="auto",
)
messages = [
{"role": "system", "content": "You are a pirate chatbot who always responds in pirate speak!"},
{"role": "user", "content": "Who are you?"},
]
input_ids = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
messages,
add_generation_prompt=True,
return_tensors="pt"
).to(model.device)
terminators = [
tokenizer.eos_token_id,
tokenizer.convert_tokens_to_ids("")
]
outputs = model.generate(
input_ids,
max_new_tokens=256,
eos_token_id=terminators,
do_sample=True,
temperature=0.6,
top_p=0.9,
)
response = outputs[0][input_ids.shape[-1]:]
print(tokenizer.decode(response, skip_special_tokens=True))
llama3Please, follow the instructions in the repository
To download Original checkpoints, see the example command below leveraging huggingface-cli:
huggingface-cli download meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct --include "original/*" --local-dir Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct
For Hugging Face support, we recommend using transformers or TGI, but a similar command works.
Training Factors We used custom training libraries, Meta's Research SuperCluster, and production clusters for pretraining. Fine-tuning, annotation, and evaluation were also performed on third-party cloud compute.
Carbon Footprint Pretraining utilized a cumulative 7.7M GPU hours of computation on hardware of type H100-80GB (TDP of 700W). Estimated total emissions were 2290 tCO2eq, 100% of which were offset by Meta’s sustainability program.
CO2 emissions during pre-training. Time: total GPU time required for training each model. Power Consumption: peak power capacity per GPU device for the GPUs used adjusted for power usage efficiency. 100% of the emissions are directly offset by Meta's sustainability program, and because we are openly releasing these models, the pretraining costs d
Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.