llama.cpp VS stanford_alpaca

> 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

# Clone the Alpaca LLM repository git clone https://github.com/tatsu-lab/stanford_alpaca.git cd stanford_alpaca

I think most of the instruction fine-tuning methods for oss models stem from Alpaca, so it should be included: https://crfm.stanford.edu/2023/03/13/alpaca.html

And the one referenced in there on synthetic data generation: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.10560

The quality of the data and the training methodology are often more critical determinants of a model's performance and accuracy. This has already been proved with the Alpaca experiment by Stanford where a simple 7 billion features powered Llama-based LLM could tie the astonishing 176 billion features powered ChatGPT 3.5.

Alpaca is an instruction-oriented LLM derived from LLaMA, enhanced by Stanford researchers with a dataset of 52,000 examples of following instructions, sourced from OpenAI’s InstructGPT through the self-instruct method. The extensive self-instruct dataset, details of data generation, and the model refinement code were publicly disclosed. This model complies with the licensing requirements of its base model. Due to the utilization of InstructGPT for data generation, it also adheres to OpenAI’s usage terms, which prohibit the creation of models competing with OpenAI. This illustrates how dataset restrictions can indirectly affect the resulting fine-tuned model.

In this article, we're going to experiment with LoRA and fine-tune Llama Alpaca using commercial hardware.

Most papers I did read showed at least a thousand, even 10000 at several cases, so I assumed that to be the trend in the case of Low rank adapter(PEFT) training.(source: [2305.14314] QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMs (arxiv.org) , Stanford CRFM (Alpaca) and the minimum being openchat/openchat · Hugging Face ; There are a lot more examples)

I'm not talking about OpenAI ChatGPT I'm talking about things ALPACA, and where did they train these models? Off the existing models for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cost: https://crfm.stanford.edu/2023/03/13/alpaca.html