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Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

cerebras.ai

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Re: Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

#151
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possible I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to do, but ollama works well for me for local inference with qwen on my Macbook Pro (32GB).

Yup, also using Ollama and on a Macbook Pro. Ollama is #1

But isn't ollama only local chat? Or I am missing something? I'd like to setup it as a server for my usages on another laptop (use it as my local AI hub) and would love to integrate it with some IDE using MCP

Re: Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our chips don't cost $3M. I'm not sure where you got that number but its wildly incorrect.

Are you the CEO of Cerebras? (Guessing from the handle)

I wonder why he (Andrew Feldman) didn't retort to the SRAM vs HBM memory incorrect assumption made by the OP comment; maybe he was so busy that he couldn't even cite the sibling comment? That's a bigger wrong assumption than being off by maybe 30-50% at most on Cerebras's single server price (it definitely doesn't cost less than $1.5-2M).

Re: Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you the CEO of Cerebras? (Guessing from the handle)

I wonder why he (Andrew Feldman) didn't retort to the SRAM vs HBM memory incorrect assumption made by the OP comment; maybe he was so busy that he couldn't even cite the sibling comment? That's a bigger wrong assumption than being off by maybe 30-50% at most on Cerebras's single server price (it definitely doesn't cost less than $1.5-2M).

Probably because they are loading the entire model into SRAM. Thats how they can achieve 1.5k tokens/s.

Re: Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, also using Ollama and on a Macbook Pro. Ollama is #1

But isn't ollama only local chat? Or I am missing something? I'd like to setup it as a server for my usages on another laptop (use it as my local AI hub) and would love to integrate it with some IDE using MCP

No, it can listen on 0.0.0.0 or you can serve it through a proxy

Re: Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

#155
post #56
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to run models for inference at static fp16, modern quantisation formats dynamically assign precision to the layers that need them, an average of 6bpw is practical imperceptible from full precision, 8bpw if you really want to squeeze every tiny last drop out of it (although it's unlikely it will be detectable). That is a huge memory saving.

> dynamically assign precision to the layers that need them Well now I'm curious; how is a layer judged on its relative need for precision? I guess I still have a lot of learning to do w.r.t. how quantization is done. I was under the impression it was done once, statically, and produced a new giant GGUF blob or whatever format your weights are in. Does that assumption still hold true for the approach you're describin…

Have a watch of https://youtu.be/vW30o4U9BFE

Re: Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

#156
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to run models for inference at static fp16, modern quantisation formats dynamically assign precision to the layers that need them, an average of 6bpw is practical imperceptible from full precision, 8bpw if you really want to squeeze every tiny last drop out of it (although it's unlikely it will be detectable). That is a huge memory saving.

What quantization formats are these? All the OSS ones from GGML apply a uniform quantization

Have a watch of https://youtu.be/vW30o4U9BFE

Re: Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Qwen models are, anecdotally, probably some of the best open weight models, particularly the MoE models. They are also, anecdotally, super scary censored. Asking it if anything "interesting has happened in Tianamen Square?" And then refining with "any notable protests?" And finally "maybe something to do with a tank"... All you get is vague allusions to the square being a beautiful place with a rich history.

Do you think it's done so carefully that you suspect that they have perhaps even removed texts mentioning the Tiananmen square massacre from the training set?

I have no special knowledge on the matter, but I imagine it's the same kind of alignment that prevents other LLMs from telling you e.g. how to make meth.

Re: Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you the CEO of Cerebras? (Guessing from the handle)

I wonder why he (Andrew Feldman) didn't retort to the SRAM vs HBM memory incorrect assumption made by the OP comment; maybe he was so busy that he couldn't even cite the sibling comment? That's a bigger wrong assumption than being off by maybe 30-50% at most on Cerebras's single server price (it definitely doesn't cost less than $1.5-2M).

I have followed Cerebras for sometime. Several comments: 1. Yes I think that is Feldman. I have seen him intervene at hacerknews before thou don't remember the handle specifically 2. Yes, the OP technical assumption is generally correct. Cerebras load the model onto the wafer to get the speed. It's the whole point of their architecture to minimize the distance between memory and compute. They can do otherwise in a "low cost" model, they announced something like that in a partnership with Qualcomm that AFAIK has never been implemented. But it would not be a high-speed mode. 3. The OP is also incorrect on the costs. They pick these costs up from dated customer quotation seen online (in which the Cerebras has incentive to jack it up), but this is not how anything works commercially, and at that time Cerebras was at much smaller scale. But you wouldn't expect Feldman to tell you what their actual costs are. That would be nuts. My thinking is the number could be off by up to 80% by now assuming Cerebras was making progress in their cost curve and the original number had very high margins (which it must have).

Re: Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

#159

If this is the full fp16 quant, you'd need 2TB of memory to use with the full 131k context. With 44GB of SRAM per Cerebras chip, you'd need 45 chips chained together. $3m per chip. $135m total to run this. For comparison, you can buy a DGX B200 with 8x B200 Blackwell chips and 1.4TB of memory for around $500k. Two systems would give you 2.8TB memory which is enough for this. So $1m vs $135m to run this model. It's no…

Our chips don't cost $3M. I'm not sure where you got that number but its wildly incorrect.

Agree. The OP is picking from dated and not exactly applicable data. I estimate you could be down to 20% of that by now if you were optimizing for costs. An issue that is real for you guys is software stack tractability; i.e. the ability of your team to bring on board models in a timely manner. Maybe because all models are optimized for GPUs, but it's something that I would get on top of if its fixable. Obviously, you must be taking into account these issues and competitive performance in future iterations of your chips also.

Re: Cerebras launches Qwen3-235B, achieving 1.5k tokens per second

#160

So I installed litellm proxy, pointed it at the new Cerebras API with Qwen-235B and hooked up Aider to litellm. This is not as good as claude code yet but it's so much faster. I even tried using the leaked claude code prompt into Aider but it doesn't do what I expect. Still worth trying but I learned that claude code's prompt is very specific to claude. I think this is very promising however! Aider basically spat out…

Thanks for the report. Can this be hooked up to claude code via a proxy?

You can copy paste my entire previous comment into Claude code and along with your question and ask for suggestions. I’m sure it could create an MCP server for you.
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