What GPU do I need to run HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM-360M-Instruct?
362M parameters, published in BF16. View on Hugging Face
Set up SmolLM-360M-InstructSmolLM-360M-Instruct is published by HuggingFaceTB on Hugging Face, with 13,986 downloads and 89 likes to date. It's a LlamaForCausalLM model built for text-generation, published natively in BF16.
VRAM required & cheapest live GPU fit
Required VRAM = weight size at each precision, plus a fixed overhead for KV-cache, activations, and fragmentation. Full formula and assumptions: methodology.
| Precision | Weight size | Required VRAM | Cheapest live fit | GPUs needed | Est. $/hr (full fit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BF16 | 0.7 GB | 0.8 GB | RTX 3060 | 1 | $0.110/hr |
| FP8 (quantized) | 0.3 GB | 0.4 GB | RTX 4070 Super | 1 | $0.121/hr |
| INT4 (quantized) | 0.2 GB | 0.2 GB | RTX 3060 | 1 | $0.110/hr |
A GPU is only matched to a row if its hardware supports that precision, and the primary recommendation is always a single-GPU fit when one exists.
INT4 requires a quantized checkpoint actually published for this model, check its Hugging Face page before relying on this row.
Cheapest way to run SmolLM-360M-Instruct at its published (BF16) precision: 1× RTX 3060, at $0.110/hr per GPU ($0.110/hr total). Quantizing to FP8 or INT4 (rows above) can cost less, but requires a compatible quantized checkpoint to exist for this model.
SmolLM-360M-Instruct: common questions
How much VRAM does SmolLM-360M-Instruct need?
0.8 GB at BF16, 0.4 GB at FP8 (quantized), 0.2 GB at INT4 (quantized). All of those sit under 6 GB, the smallest capacity this page reasons about, so VRAM is not what limits where this model runs. The 0.7 GB of weights plus inference overhead is the whole requirement.
How many copies of SmolLM-360M-Instruct fit on one RTX 3060?
14, by VRAM alone. That card carries 12.0 GB and one copy needs 0.8 GB at BF16, on a live rate of $0.110/hr for the whole card. Throughput is not modelled here, so 14 copies is not 14 times the requests served.
Weight-to-VRAM math, the fit rules, and how live prices are normalized: full methodology.
More SmolLM models
- SmolLM-135M (135M, F32)
- SmolLM-135M-Instruct (135M, BF16)
- SmolLM-135M-Instruct-FP32 (135M, F32)
- SmolLM-1.7B (1.7B, F32)
Related reading: H100 pricing and specs, The best GPUs for AI, ranked, and Best GPU for LLM inference.
