llama.cpp VS ggml

> The benchmark prompt was:

> Write a compact Python function that parses a unified diff and returns the changed file paths. Then explain two edge cases.

> Each benchmark generated about 128 tokens.

Generating 128 tokens is probably not enough for good benchmark results. MTP speedup depends on how often the predicted tokens are accepted. In my experience, the very early output has a higher acceptance rate, so short testing can give false positive speedups.

Also llama.cpp includes a tool specifically for benchmarking:

https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/blob/master/tools/llam...

In my build, MTP came from mainline llama.cpp, not ik_llama. ik_llama got me to ~47 (engine + quant), but I couldn't get MTP running there — my build rejected the -mtp flags and ignored the model's nextn tensors. Mainline llama.cpp added MTP fairly recently (PR #22673, merged 2026-05-16), and that's where it worked for me. (There may well be an ik_llama path I missed — this is just what got it going on my box.)

That script grew up. Today I'm releasing LlamaStash, the first public release of a fast, cross-platform, terminal-native launcher for llama.cpp with zero overhead.

LlamaStash spawns the unmodified upstream llama-server. So three different questions follow from that, and there is a benchmark suite for each.

llama.cpp includes a benchmarking tool called llama-bench https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/blob/master/tools/llam...

ik_llama includes llama-sweep-bench https://github.com/ikawrakow/ik_llama.cpp/blob/main/examples...

When comparing hardware, the output of these tools is very helpful to let others put it into context. The post says the output is "reading speed" but knowing the prefill and token generation speeds would be a lot more helpful.

lol the same way we implement all of the reduced precision fp8, fp4 types today: by storing them in the corresponding uint:

https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/discussions/15095

# Build llama.cpp with Metal backend git clone https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp cd llama.cpp && cmake -B build -DGGML_METAL=ON && cmake --build build -j # Community-quantized GGUFs (Google ships safetensors; unsloth ships GGUF) huggingface-cli download unsloth/gemma-4-31B-it-GGUF \ gemma-4-31B-it-Q4_K_M.gguf --local-dir . huggingface-cli download unsloth/gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-GGUF \ gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-Q4_K_M.gguf --local-dir . # Benchmark: 200 generations of 512 tokens, log per-call timing ./build/bin/llama-bench -m gemma-4-31B-it-Q4_K_M.gguf -n 512 -r 200 -o json > dense.json ./build/bin/llama-bench -m gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-Q4_K_M.gguf -n 512 -r 200 -o json > moe.json

Manifesto / ggml / ops

It’s a different repo. https://github.com/ggml-org/ggml

The models are implemented by Ollama https://github.com/ollama/ollama/tree/main/model/models

I can say as a fact, for the gpt-oss model, we also implemented our own MXFP4 kernel. Benchmarked against the reference implementations to make sure Ollama is on par. We implemented harmony and tested it. This should significantly impact tool calling capability.

Im not sure if im feeding here. We really love what we do, and I hope it shows in our product, in Ollama’s design and in our voice to our community.

You don’t have to like Ollama. That’s subjective to your taste. As a maintainer, I certainly hope to have you as a user one day. If we don’t meet your needs and you want to use an alternative project, that’s totally cool too. It’s the power of having a choice.

One of the core design goals Georgi Gerganov had with GGUF was to not need other files. It's literally bullet point #1 in the specs

>Single-file deployment

>Full information: all information needed to load a model is contained in the model file, and no additional information needs to be provided by the user.

https://github.com/ggml-org/ggml/blob/master/docs/gguf.md

We literally just got rid of that multi file chaos only for ollama to add it back :/

All models of 3B and 7B size were run locally with Ollama. The 7B+ models were used with a Kaggle notebooks and a suitable gguf model file loaded with ggml.

I was under the impression that it was simply the file format used by llama.cpp and ggml, name inspired by the name of the author (https://github.com/ggerganov): https://github.com/ggerganov/ggml/blob/master/docs/gguf.md

He prefixes everything with “gg” (his initials).

llm: This crate provides a unified interface for loading and using Large Language Model. The backend at the time of writing is ggml only https://github.com/ggerganov/ggml.

git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/ggml cd ggml mkdir build cd build cmake .. make -j4 gpt-j ../examples/gpt-j/download-ggml-model.sh 6B

Cool. I was just learning about GGUF by creating my own parser for it based on the spec https://github.com/ggerganov/ggml/blob/master/docs/gguf.md (for educational purposes)

If you don't care about the details of how those model servers work, then something that abstracts out the whole process like LM Studio or Ollama is all you need.

However, if you want to get into the weeds of how this actually works, I recommend you look up model quantization and some libraries like ggml[1] that actually do that for you.

[1] https://github.com/ggerganov/ggml