Phosphene is a free local generative-video panel for Apple Silicon. HiDream is wired into its Image Studio. Install Pinokio, then in Pinokio install Phosphene. Note: Phosphene's HiDream integration uses BF16 by default since edit requires BF16 — this Q8 repo is for text-to-image-only workflows that want a deterministic memory upper bound.

An 8-bit quantized MLX port of HiDream-ai/HiDream-O1-Image-Dev.

⚠ Q8 does NOT support edit / multi-ref. Per-group dequantization noise compounds against reference-image features in attention and produces degenerate output. For edit / multi-reference workflows use the BF16 sibling repo instead.

Sibling repos

🟢 BF16 (full precision) — 17.5 GB, ~16 GB RAM, clean across all dimensions. Use this when in doubt.
🟡 Q6 — 8 GB, ~8.5 GB RAM, fastest. Same artifact behaviour as Q8.
🟡 Q8 (this repo) — 10 GB, ~11.5 GB RAM, balanced. Best at square 2048×2048 or 1024×1024. Visible 32-pixel patch grid in flat regions at non-square dims.

When to use Q8

✅ Square 1024×1024 or 2048×2048 — clean output, less RAM than BF16
✅ When you want a deterministic memory upper bound (Q8 doesn't depend on activation distribution)
❌ Non-square dims (1440×2560, 3104×1312, etc) — visible 32-pixel patch grid in skies, walls, water → use BF16
⚠ Q8 is not faster than Q6 here — both are bandwidth-bound on this hardware. Pick Q8 only if you need its slightly tighter quality margin at square dims.

What's in this repo

model.safetensors — Q8 quantized backbone (10 GB)
extras/custom_heads.safetensors — diffusion-side heads (75 MB, BF16)
config.json (with quantization: {bits: 8, group_size: 64} so mlx-vlm wraps Linear → QuantizedLinear correctly)
Tokenizer + processor configs

Code

Inference scripts are in the BF16 sibling repo under scripts/hidream_o1/. Clone that for code, this for weights only.

Quick start

bash

# Get the code from the BF16 sibling
hf download mlx-community/HiDream-O1-Image-Dev-mlx-bf16 --local-dir hidream-o1-mlx \
  --include "scripts/*" --include "*.md" --include "*.txt" --include "*.gitattributes"
cd hidream-o1-mlx
uv venv --python 3.11 && uv pip install -r requirements.txt

# Get the Q8 weights
hf download mlx-community/HiDream-O1-Image-Dev-mlx-q8 --local-dir mlx_models/hidream-o1-dev-q8

# Run (square dims only for clean output)
.venv/bin/python scripts/hidream_o1/generate_hidream_o1_mlx.py \
  --model-path mlx_models/hidream-o1-dev-q8 \
  --prompt "your prompt here" \
  --width 2048 --height 2048 \
  --output out.png

Performance

Resolution	Per step	Total (28 steps)	Peak RAM	Quality
1024×1024	2.36 s	67 s	11.5 GB	✅ clean
2048×2048	6.68 s	187 s	11.5 GB	✅ clean
1440×2560 (non-square)	~4.5 s	~127 s	~10 GB	⚠ patch grid visible

License

MIT — see the BF16 repo for the full LICENSE file and acknowledgements.