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Ember-1

589 points · 249 comments · gmays

  1. GodelNumbering · · focus · HN ↗
    This is the golden age of model training. Some days ago, I decided I wanted a local CPU only model that can perform exceptionally well for English to Bash translation (to avoid the googling for command syntax). I got a bunch of subagents to generate large amount of training data (140k+ samples), got the Qwen 3 0.6B base model, pointed Astra at it, and off to the races. It trained for 2 days (on and off) and I got a surprisingly good model for my task! The total active time I spent was a few hours. And it is still improving, what a time to be alive!
    1. busfahrer · · focus · HN ↗
      I use this solution for your exact use case:

      I have a single command that fires up llama.cpp on cpu only using gemma4 e2b, answers a single question from the command line and exits. This takes about 3 seconds to load from an SSD, and is smart enough to solve exactly these "remind me of the syntax" scenarios if you dont wanna switch to a browser.

      1. GCUMstlyHarmls · · focus · HN ↗
        I have no experience doing this, and I dont mean this to be snarky: what is the power (and thermal) usage of running your CPU only LLM?

        When I do something "heavy", my 9800x3D will kick on the fans and start making lot of heat. This is fine when I'm intentionally doing say a transcode, but if I'm just querying syntax it could get pretty annoying. Do you "feel" it? I know that will be pretty machine dependent.

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