Liquid AI, United States · Released October 5, 2026New
D1 3B has 3.12B parameters. In BF16 its weights alone take 5.82 GiB; quantized to 4-bit, about 1.57 GiB. Each 32K-token request adds 0.50 GiB of KV cache. Cheapest way to run it today: 1 × GeForce RTX 3090 (24 GB) at $0.143 per hour.
Weights plus the KV cache of one request (BF16 cache) and the model's fixed recurrent state, in GiB. Add 1 to 3 GiB for the inference engine itself.
Weights format
Weights only
+ 8K context
+ 32K context
BF16 / FP16
5.82
5.94
6.32
FP8 / INT8
3.40
3.52
3.90
4-bit (GGUF Q4_K_M)
1.57
1.69
2.07
D1 3B GGUF files
Exact size of each quantization in AtomicChat/d1-3B-GGUF (opens in a new tab), and the smallest GPU that runs it with llama.cpp, Ollama or LM Studio and an 8K-token context.
Quantization
File size
Smallest GPU
BF16
5.03 GiB
RTX 4060 (8 GB)
Q8_0
2.68 GiB
RTX 4060 (8 GB)
Q6_K
2.19 GiB
RTX 4060 (8 GB)
Q5_K_M
1.82 GiB
RTX 4060 (8 GB)
Q4_K_M
1.54 GiB
RTX 4060 (8 GB)
IQ4_XS
1.46 GiB
RTX 4060 (8 GB)
Read every day from Hugging Face. Split files are added together; vision projectors are left out.
How many GPUs to run D1 3B
Fewest GPUs that fit the weights plus one 8K-token request. Data-center GPUs use vLLM (90% of memory usable), the others llama.cpp. Several GPUs split the model with tensor or pipeline parallelism.
GPU
BF16 / FP16
FP8 / INT8
4-bit (GGUF Q4_K_M)
GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB
1
1
1
GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB
1
1
1
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB
1
1
1
Mac M5 Max 128 GB 96 GB usable
1
1
1
NVIDIA H100 80 GB
1
1
1
NVIDIA H200 141 GB
1
1
1
NVIDIA B200 (HGX) 180 GB
1
1
1
Cheapest way to run D1 3B today
For each GPU: the fewest cards that fit D1 3B with one 8K-token request, the most faithful weight format at that count, and the cheapest on-demand price (2026-10-10).
On-demand prices from RunPod, Vast.ai, Verda and Azure, checked every hour. Serving many users needs more KV cache, so more memory: size it in the calculator. Some links are affiliate links: StudioTV may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.
KV cache: how memory grows with context
Architecture: 30 layers · 8 full attention (8 KV × 64) · 22 short-convolution layers. Its KV cache is 3.8× smaller than if every layer used full attention, because only 8 of its 30 layers keep a KV cache; the others hold a small fixed-size state.
Context per request
BF16 cache
FP8 cache
8K tokens
0.13 GiB
0.06 GiB
32K tokens
0.50 GiB
0.25 GiB
Plus 0.26 MiB of recurrent state per request, whatever the context.
D1 3B VRAM FAQ
How much VRAM does D1 3B need?
In BF16 the weights alone take 5.82 GiB (6.2 GB). In FP8 that is 3.40 GiB, and about 1.57 GiB with 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M). Each request then adds KV cache: 0.13 GiB at 8K tokens and 0.50 GiB at 32K (BF16 cache).
Can D1 3B run on a single RTX 4090 (24 GB)?
Yes. In BF16 / FP16 it fits on one RTX 4090 with an 8K-token context (5.94 GiB including the cache, with llama.cpp).
What is the cheapest way to run D1 3B?
On 2026-10-10, the cheapest on-demand setup is 1 × GeForce RTX 3090 (24 GB) with BF16 / FP16 weights on Vast.ai, at $0.143 per hour (about $104.39 per month). Next: 1 × GeForce RTX 5080 (16 GB) with BF16 / FP16 weights on Vast.ai, at $0.223 per hour. Sized for one 8K-token request; prices are checked every hour.
How many H100 GPUs does D1 3B need?
With one request and an 8K-token context: 1 in BF16, 1 in FP8 and 1 in 4-bit (vLLM, 90% of memory usable). Serving many users at once needs more memory for their KV caches: the calculator sizes that for you.
D1 3B VRAM badge
For a model card or a README: the 4-bit size and the smallest GPU it fits on, linked to this page. Data as JSON: /api/models/d1-3b.json.
Estimates, not guarantees: computed from the official config.json with the same engine as the LLM VRAM Calculator. Real usage depends on your engine version and settings.