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Mozilla announced, through a blog post, the lrelease of a compiler, which has like The goal is to dramatically simplify the use of several large language models. (LLM) on almost any desktop or server.
The new Mozilla project called “llamafile”, it is an open source compiler which can take a machine learning model parameter file in GGUF format and convert it into an executable file that can run on six different operating systems on AMD64 and ARM64 hardware.
And they won't let me lie, but the Large language models (LLMs) for local use are generally distributed in various sets, which the weight of each of these files is usually several gigabytes. These files are not directly usable by themselves, which complicates its distribution and execution compared to other types of software. Additionally, a specific model may have undergone modifications and adjustments, leading to different results when using different versions.
Mozilla realized this, took action on the matter and to address this challenge, Mozilla's innovation group has launched "llamafile", which, as mentioned above, is a compiler that converts the LLM into a single binary file capable of running on six different operating systems (macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD) without the need for additional installation. This solution greatly facilitates the distribution and execution of LLM, while ensuring the consistency and reproducibility of a specific version of LLM over time.
About the llamafile compiler, it is mentioned that was created by combining two projects: llama.cpp (an open source LLM chatbot framework) and Cosmopolitan Libc (an open source project that allows you to compile and run C programs on many platforms and architectures). During the implementation, Mozilla mentions that it faced interesting challenges and had to significantly expand the scope of Cosmopolitan to achieve the stated objectives.
Our goal is to make large open source language models much more accessible to both developers and end users. We are doing this by combining llama.cpp with Cosmopolitan Libc into a framework that collapses all the complexity of LLMs into a single executable file (called a “llamafile”) that runs locally on most computers, without installation.
It is mentioned that One of the main goals of llamafile was to be able to run on multiple CPU microarchitectures. This is where llama.cpp comes in to allow new Intel systems to use the features of modern processors without sacrificing support for older computers, while for AMD64 and ARM64 these are concatenated using a shell script that starts the appropriate version. The file format is compatible with WIN32 and most UNIX shells.
Another challenge that was addressed was the issue of the weights of the LLM files., which can be integrated into llamafile, thanks to the support for PKZIP in the GGML library. This allows uncompressed weights to be mapped directly to memory, as a self-extracting file, and also allows quantized weights distributed online to be prefixed by a compatible version of the software called.cpp, ensuring that originally observed behaviors can be reproduced indefinitely. .
Suppose you have a set of LLM weights in the form of a 4 GB file (in the commonly used GGUF format). With llamafile you can transform that 4GB file into a binary that runs on six operating systems without installation.
Finally, it should be mentioned that Mozilla launched the project «llamafile» written in C/C++ and distributed under the Apache license, which implies fewer restrictions in terms of methods of use and availability of resources, compared to licenses such as the GPL.
As for interested in learning more about it the project or already want to use it, you can consult the details and/or the quick guide to use at the following link.