I've been experimenting with a new quantization approach that selectively elevates the precision of key layers beyond what the default IMatrix configuration provides.

In my testing, standard IMatrix quantization underperforms at lower bit depths, especially with Mixture of Experts (MoE) models. To address this, I'm using the --tensor-type option in llama.cpp to manually "bump" important layers to higher precision. You can see the implementation here:
👉 Layer bumping with llama.cpp

While this does increase model file size, it significantly improves precision for a given quantization level.

I'd love your feedback—have you tried this? How does it perform for you?

Click here to get info on choosing the right GGUF model format

Granite-3.0-8B-Instruct

Model Summary: Granite-3.0-8B-Instruct is a 8B parameter model finetuned from Granite-3.0-8B-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 with a structured chat format, including supervised finetuning, model alignment using reinforcement learning, and model merging.

Developers: Granite Team, IBM
GitHub Repository: ibm-granite/granite-3.0-language-models
Website: Granite Docs
Paper: Granite 3.0 Language Models
Release Date: October 21st, 2024
License: Apache 2.0

Supported Languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, Czech, Italian, Korean, Dutch, and Chinese. Users may finetune Granite 3.0 models for languages beyond these 12 languages.

Intended use: The model is designed to respond to general instructions and can be used to build AI assistants for multiple domains, including business applications.

Capabilities

Summarization
Text classification
Text extraction
Question-answering
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
Code related tasks
Function-calling tasks
Multilingual dialog use cases

Generation: This is a simple example of how to use Granite-3.0-8B-Instruct model.

Install the following libraries:

shell

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.

python

import torch
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer

device = "auto"
model_path = "ibm-granite/granite-3.0-8b-instruct"
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)

Model Architecture: Granite-3.0-8B-Instruct is based on a decoder-only dense transformer architecture. Core components of this architecture are: GQA and RoPE, MLP with SwiGLU, RMSNorm, and shared input/output embeddings.

Model	2B Dense	8B Dense	1B MoE	3B MoE
Embedding size	2048	4096	1024	1536
Number of layers	40	40	24	32
Attention head size	64	128	64	64
Number of attention heads	32	32	16	24
Number of KV heads	8	8	8	8
MLP hidden size	8192	12800	512	512
MLP activation	SwiGLU	SwiGLU	SwiGLU	SwiGLU
Number of Experts	—	—	32	40
MoE TopK	—	—	8	8
Initialization std	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1
Sequence Length	4096	4096	4096	4096
Position Embedding	RoPE	RoPE	RoPE	RoPE
# Parameters	2.5B	8.1B	1.3B	3.3B
# Active Parameters	2.5B	8.1B	400M	800M
# Training tokens	12T	12T	10T	10T

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) very small amounts of human-curated data. A detailed attribution of datasets can be found in the Granite Technical Report and Accompanying Author List.

Infrastructure: We train Granite 3.0 Language Models using IBM's super computing cluster, Blue Vela, which is outfitted with NVIDIA H100 GPUs. This cluster provides a scalable and efficient infrastructure for training our models over thousands of GPUs while minimizing environmental impact by utilizing 100% renewable energy sources.

Ethical Considerations and Limitations: Granite 3.0 Instruct Models are primarily finetuned using instruction-response pairs mostly in English, but also multilingual data covering eleven languages. Although this model can handle multilingual dialog use cases, its performance might not be similar to English tasks. In such case, introducing a small number of examples (few-shot) can help the model in generating more accurate outputs. While this model has been aligned by keeping safety in consideration, the model may in some cases produce inaccurate, biased, or unsafe responses to user prompts. So we urge the community to use this model with proper safety testing and tuning tailored for their specific tasks.

Resources

⭐️ Learn about the latest updates with Granite: https://www.ibm.com/granite
📄 Get started with tutorials, best practices, and prompt engineering advice: https://www.ibm.com/granite/docs/
💡 Learn about the latest Granite learning resources: https://ibm.biz/granite-learning-resources

🚀 If you find these models useful

Help me test my AI-Powered Quantum Network Monitor Assistant with quantum-ready security checks:

👉 Quantum Network Monitor

The full Open Source Code for the Quantum Network Monitor Service available at my github repos ( repos with NetworkMonitor in the name) : Source Code Quantum Network Monitor. You will also find the code I use to quantize the models if you want to do it yourself GGUFModelBuilder

💬 How to test:
Choose an AI assistant type:

TurboLLM (GPT-4.1-mini)
HugLLM (Hugginface Open-source models)
TestLLM (Experimental CPU-only)

What I’m Testing

I’m pushing the limits of small open-source models for AI network monitoring, specifically:

Function calling against live network services
How small can a model go while still handling:
- Automated Nmap security scans
- Quantum-readiness checks
- Network Monitoring tasks

🟡 TestLLM – Current experimental model (llama.cpp on 2 CPU threads on huggingface docker space):

✅ Zero-configuration setup
⏳ 30s load time (slow inference but no API costs) . No token limited as the cost is low.
🔧 Help wanted! If you’re into edge-device AI, let’s collaborate!

Other Assistants

🟢 TurboLLM – Uses gpt-4.1-mini :

**It performs very well but unfortunatly OpenAI charges per token. For this reason tokens usage is limited.
Create custom cmd processors to run .net code on Quantum Network Monitor Agents
Real-time network diagnostics and monitoring
Security Audits
Penetration testing (Nmap/Metasploit)

🔵 HugLLM – Latest Open-source models:

🌐 Runs on Hugging Face Inference API. Performs pretty well using the lastest models hosted on Novita.

💡 Example commands you could test:

"Give me info on my websites SSL certificate"
"Check if my server is using quantum safe encyption for communication"
"Run a comprehensive security audit on my server"
'"Create a cmd processor to .. (what ever you want)" Note you need to install a Quantum Network Monitor Agent to run the .net code on. This is a very flexible and powerful feature. Use with caution!

Final Word

I fund the servers used to create these model files, run the Quantum Network Monitor service, and pay for inference from Novita and OpenAI—all out of my own pocket. All the code behind the model creation and the Quantum Network Monitor project is open source. Feel free to use whatever you find helpful.

If you appreciate the work, please consider buying me a coffee ☕. Your support helps cover service costs and allows me to raise token limits for everyone.

I'm also open to job opportunities or sponsorship.

Thank you! 😊

Mungert/granite-3.0-8b-instruct-GGUF

granite-3.0-8b-instruct GGUF Models

Model Generation Details

Quantization Beyond the IMatrix