Skywork-13B TPS calculator

Open weights Kunlun Inc. 13B parameters October 2023

Each card below is assessed against this model at the context length and minimum quality you choose. Speed is an estimate for a single request, calculated from the card's memory bandwidth and the size of the model once compressed.

Calculated for this model

509 cards that can run it

818 cards we hold specifications for

Smallest card that fits

Xeon Phi 5110P

8 GB · Q3_K_M · 18.3 tok/s

Fastest card

B200

261 tok/s · 180 GB

Which GPUs can run Skywork-13B?

Set the inputs, read the answer

A longer conversation needs more memory, which can push this model off smaller cards.

Hides cards that would only fit the model by compressing it below this point.

509 cards match

Calculating
Needs Quantisation Fit
261 tok/s

156–417 · low confidence

B200 NVIDIA 180 GB 8,000 GB/s Jan 2024 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
261 tok/s

156–417 · low confidence

B300 NVIDIA 288 GB 8,000 GB/s Sep 2025 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
208 tok/s

125–333 · low confidence

Radeon Instinct MI350X AMD 288 GB 8,190 GB/s Jan 2025 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
208 tok/s

125–333 · low confidence

Radeon Instinct MI355X AMD 288 GB 8,190 GB/s Jan 2025 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
166 tok/s

100–266 · low confidence

Radeon Instinct MI300 AMD 128 GB 6,550 GB/s Jan 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
159 tok/s

96–255 · low confidence

H200 NVL NVIDIA 141 GB 4,890 GB/s Nov 2024 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
159 tok/s

96–255 · low confidence

H200 SXM 141 GB NVIDIA 141 GB 4,890 GB/s Nov 2024 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
152 tok/s

91–244 · low confidence

Radeon Instinct MI325X AMD 256 GB 6,000 GB/s Oct 2024 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
135 tok/s

81–217 · low confidence

Radeon Instinct MI300A AMD 128 GB 5,325 GB/s Dec 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
135 tok/s

81–217 · low confidence

Radeon Instinct MI300X AMD 192 GB 5,325 GB/s Dec 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
135 tok/s

81–217 · low confidence

Radeon Instinct MI308X AMD 192 GB 5,325 GB/s Dec 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
131 tok/s

79–210 · low confidence

CMP 170HX 8 GB NVIDIA 8 GB 1,490 GB/s Sep 2021 7.1 GB Q3_K_M Tight
128 tok/s

77–205 · low confidence

H100 NVL 94 GB NVIDIA 94 GB 3,940 GB/s Mar 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
117 tok/s

70–188 · low confidence

CMP 170HX 10 GB NVIDIA 10 GB 1,560 GB/s Sep 2021 8.6 GB Q4_K_M Tight
109 tok/s

66–175 · low confidence

H100 PCIe 96 GB NVIDIA 96 GB 3,360 GB/s Mar 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
109 tok/s

66–175 · low confidence

H100 SXM5 80 GB NVIDIA 80 GB 3,360 GB/s Oct 2022 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
109 tok/s

66–175 · low confidence

H100 SXM5 94 GB NVIDIA 94 GB 3,360 GB/s Mar 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
109 tok/s

66–175 · low confidence

H100 SXM5 96 GB NVIDIA 96 GB 3,360 GB/s Mar 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
109 tok/s

66–175 · low confidence

H800 SXM5 NVIDIA 80 GB 3,360 GB/s Mar 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
83.4 tok/s

50–133 · low confidence

Radeon Instinct MI250 AMD 128 GB 3,280 GB/s Nov 2021 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
83.4 tok/s

50–133 · low confidence

Radeon Instinct MI250X AMD 128 GB 3,280 GB/s Nov 2021 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
69.5 tok/s

42–111 · low confidence

Data Center GPU Max 1550 Intel 128 GB 3,280 GB/s Jan 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
68.0 tok/s

41–109 · low confidence

Data Center GPU Max Subsystem Intel 128 GB 3,210 GB/s Jan 2023 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable
67.5 tok/s

41–108 · low confidence

RTX A5000-8Q NVIDIA 8 GB 768 GB/s Apr 2021 7.1 GB Q3_K_M Tight
66.5 tok/s

40–106 · low confidence

A100 SXM4 80 GB NVIDIA 80 GB 2,040 GB/s Nov 2020 14.6 GB Q8_0 Comfortable

Speeds are estimates for a single request — one conversation at a time — calculated from memory bandwidth, model size and quantisation. Real throughput varies with the inference runtime and its version. Figures published by hardware vendors measure many simultaneous requests and are much higher.

On record

Full specification

Everything on record for this model. Most of it describes how it was trained rather than how it runs — useful context for judging how much work went into it, and how it compares with models built at a different scale.

Origin

Who built this model, where, and when it was published.

Organisation
Kunlun Inc.
Organisation type
Industry
Country
China
Published
30 October 2023
Authors
Tianwen Wei, Liang Zhao, Lichang Zhang, Bo Zhu, Lijie Wang, Haihua Yang, Biye Li, Cheng Cheng, Weiwei Lü, Rui Hu, Chenxia Li, Liu Yang, Xilin Luo, Xuejie Wu, Lunan Liu, Wenjun Cheng, Peng Cheng, Jianhao Zhang, Xiaoyu Zhang, Lei Lin, Xiaokun Wang, Yutuan Ma, Chuanhai Dong, Yanqi Sun, Yifu Chen, Yongyi Peng, Xiaojuan Liang, Shuicheng Yan, Han Fang, Yahui Zhou

What it does

The problem areas the model was built for. A model can carry several of each.

Domain
Language
Task
Language modeling, Language modeling/generation, Translation
Numerical format
BF16

Size

How large the model is and how much data it was trained on. Parameters are the figure that decides whether it fits on a given graphics card.

Parameters
13B

13B

Training data
3,200,000,000,000 tokens

The full SkyPile dataset is 6 trillion tokens, roughly half English and half Chinese: (https://huggingface.co/Skywork/Skywork-13B-base). The model is trained for the equivalent of 0.53 epochs on the full dataset, or 3.18 trillion unique tokens. This is around 2.78 trillion words, based on an average of 1 word/token for the Chinese portion and 0.75 word/token on the English portion.

Epochs
1
Batch size
16,000,000

Table 3

Training compute

The arithmetic performed to train the model, measured in floating-point operations. It is a measure of what the training run cost, not of how fast the finished model answers you.

Training compute
2.5 × 10²³ FLOP

"Our Skywork-13B is trained on a cluster of 64 NVIDIA-HGX-A800 nodes, a total of 512 A800-80G SXM GPUs... The training process of Skywork-13B spanned a total of 39 days." They note that "we achieved a token throughput of 1873 per GPU per second and a model flops utilization (MFU) of 56.5%... ". "MFU" was coined in the Palm paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.02311.pdf) and only counts operations used to train the model, not all operations observed on the hardware. MFU is lower than traditionall…

How it was established
Operation counting

The training run

What it physically took to train: which chips, how many, for how long, and what that drew from the wall.

Training hardware
NVIDIA A800 PCIe 40 GB
Chips used
512
Wall-clock time
940 hours (39.2 days)

39 days

Hardware utilisation
MFU 46.4% · HFU 56.5%

Authors report utilization incorrectly, calculating HFU but reporting it as MFU: "With this configuration, we achieved a token throughput of 1873 per GPU per second and a model flops utilization (MFU) of 56.5%." See table 10 for throughput and utilization figures, incorrectly reported as MFU. On the primary Skywork model, they achieve 176.2 TFLOPS (out of 311.8 TFLOPS maximum on the A800) for an HFU of 56.5% (but their utilization column in the table calls it MFU). Calculating actual MFU: Ops-c…

Power draw
254.0 kW

Availability

Whether you can obtain the model and run it on your own hardware, which is what decides if any of the graphics-card figures on this page apply.

Weights
Open — downloadable
Model access
Open weights (restricted use)
Training code
Open (restricted use)

commercial but restrictive license: https://github.com/SkyworkAI/Skywork/blob/main/LICENSE part of the training data is open, but only 2.5%: "In order to train Skywork-13B, we build SkyPile, a vast, high quality corpus comprising more than 6 trillion tokens. A segment of the corpus, comprising over 150 billion tokens of web text, has been open sourced to facilitate research and training on Chinese LLMs" training code: https://github.com/SkyworkAI/Skywork/blob/main/train/train.py

How it is classified

Labels the source dataset applies when tracking notable models, and how confident it is in the entry.

Likely above 10²³ FLOP
Yes
Why it is tracked
SOTA improvement

"We show that our model not only excels on popular benchmarks, but also achieves state of the art performance in Chinese language modeling on diverse domains" they compare the model only to other Chinese models, not absolute SOTA

Record confidence
Confident
Citations
129

Sources

Where this record came from and when it was last checked.

Reference
Skywork: A More Open Bilingual Foundation Model
Last updated
25 May 2026

The extremes

What the numbers mean

Hardware requirements in practice

Minimum card

Xeon Phi 5110P

Memory needed

7.1 GB

Fastest

261 tok/s

Skywork-13B reaches a parameter count of 13B. That is small enough that hardware is rarely the obstacle, including on cards several years old. The number of cards we track that can run it: 509.

The entry point is Xeon Phi 5110P, with a memory capacity of 8 GB, running it at a compression of Q3_K_M and producing around 18.3 tokens per second.

The fastest we calculate for it is B200, generating roughly 261 tokens per second on the strength of a memory bandwidth of 8,000 GB/s.

What this model is

Skywork-13B was published by Kunlun Inc., in the country recorded as China, during October 2023. The publishing organisation is categorised as industry.

It works in the domain of Language, and is recorded as performing the task of language modeling, Language modeling/generation, Translation.

Because its weights were released, nothing about running it depends on a provider staying available — it is yours once downloaded.

What decides the speed

Across every card that can run it, the middle of the range sits at 21.2 tokens per second. Clearing the ten tokens per second that roughly matches reading speed: 459 of them.

Every weight participates in every token here, so bandwidth is the whole story: the ranking below is effectively a ranking of memory throughput.

Without the attention layout on record, the memory column is an approximation. It is close enough to choose hardware by, and least reliable at long context.

How it was trained

Producing it required arithmetic totalling around 2.5 × 10²³ FLOP, on hardware recorded as NVIDIA A800 PCIe 40 GB. That figure measures what producing the model cost, and has no bearing on how fast it answers.

The training set ran to roughly 3,200,000,000,000 tokens of text.

It is tracked in the underlying dataset for one reason in particular: sOTA improvement.

Step by step

How to choose a GPU for Skywork-13B

The table above has already assessed every card we hold specifications for against this model. Getting to your answer takes six steps.

  1. 01

    Start from the memory column

    Every card here has been checked against Skywork-13B, needing around 7.1 GB at a compression of Q3_K_M. Capacity is the gate — a card either holds it or it does not.

  2. 02

    Decide how long your conversations run

    Set the context to what you will actually use. The cache grows with the conversation, and it is the usual reason a card that seemed fine stops fitting Skywork-13B.

  3. 03

    Choose how far you will compress it

    Compression is what makes a model fit smaller cards, at some cost in accuracy, reaching a compression of Q3_K_M on the smallest card that fits. Setting a minimum quality drops the cards that only manage it by squeezing further than you would want, and holds the comparison at one level.

  4. 04

    Compare tokens per second, not specifications

    Ranking by tokens per second follows memory bandwidth rather than core counts, for Skywork-13B. It will not match a gaming ordering, because generation is bound by memory bandwidth. The card topping the list is B200, at 261 tok/s.

  5. 05

    Read the fit column last

    A tight fit runs, but leaves nothing spare for a longer conversation, in the case of Skywork-13B. Comfortable means you can grow the context later. That difference matters more than a few tokens per second, so buy for comfortable if you expect to.

  6. 06

    Check the card from the other side

    Following a card through to its own page shows every other model it can hold, which is the question that follows once you have settled on Skywork-13B.

Answers

Skywork-13B — common questions

01

Skywork-13B— how much VRAM does it need?

It needs about 7.1 GB at a compression of Q3_K_M, which is what the smallest card that runs it uses. Less compression needs more: the figures in the memory column above are recalculated for each card, because each one holds the least-compressed version it can.

02

Skywork-13B— can I run it on a GPU holding 8 GB?

Yes. The card CMP 170HX 8 GB, holding 8 GB, runs it at a compression of Q3_K_M, using about 7.1 GB and generating roughly 131 tokens per second. The fit is tight.

03

Skywork-13B— can I run it on a GPU holding 12 GB?

Yes. The card GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, holding 12 GB, runs it at a compression of Q5_K_M, using about 10.1 GB and generating roughly 53.1 tokens per second. The fit is tight.

04

Skywork-13B— can I run it on a GPU holding 16 GB?

Yes. The card Tesla V100 SXM2 16 GB, holding 16 GB, runs it at a compression of Q6_K, using about 11.6 GB and generating roughly 53.5 tokens per second. The fit is comfortable.

05

Skywork-13B— can I run it on a GPU holding 24 GB?

Yes. The card GeForce RTX 5090 D V2, holding 24 GB, runs it at a compression of Q8_0, using about 14.6 GB and generating roughly 43.7 tokens per second. The fit is comfortable.

06

Skywork-13B— is it open source?

Its weights are published, so it can be downloaded and run on your own hardware. Note that open weights is not the same as open source in the full sense — it says nothing about the training data, the training code, or the commercial terms attached.

07

Skywork-13B— how many parameters does it have?

It has a parameter count of 13B. 13B. That figure is the total, and it is what decides how much memory the model needs — roughly half a gigabyte per billion at the compression most people use.

08

Skywork-13B— who created it?

It was published by Kunlun Inc., based in China, an organisation categorised as industry.

09

Skywork-13B— when was it released?

It was published in October 2023. Capability per parameter has improved considerably since, so a newer model of the same size is often the better use of the same hardware.

10

Skywork-13B— what is it used for?

It works in the domain of Language, and is recorded as handling the task of language modeling, Language modeling/generation, Translation. Models frequently carry more than one of each, and the tags describe purpose rather than capability limits.

11

Skywork-13B— where can I download it?

The weights are published, though we do not hold a repository link for it. This site calculates hardware requirements rather than hosting model files.

12

Skywork-13B— how much compute was used to train it?

Training consumed around 2.5 × 10²³ FLOP, on hardware recorded as NVIDIA A800 PCIe 40 GB. That measures what producing the model cost and says nothing about how quickly it answers once trained — inference speed comes from memory bandwidth, not from the training budget.

13

Skywork-13B— can I run it if it does not fit in my GPU?

It can be split between the card and system memory, but it generates painfully slowly that way. The nearest miss we calculate falls short by 3.2 GB. Every figure here assumes the whole model is resident on the card.

14

Skywork-13B— would two GPUs run it faster?

Two cards buy memory rather than speed, which matters only if one card cannot hold it. The number that can: 509. So a second card is rarely the answer here.

15

Skywork-13B— why does the quantisation differ between cards?

Because capacity varies, so does how hard it has to be squeezed. The number of distinct levels in the table above: 5. Bigger cards get the more accurate version, and the quality floor above pins the comparison to one level.

16

Skywork-13B— how accurate are these speed estimates?

Every figure is derived from memory bandwidth and model size, not benchmarked, which is why each is published as a range rather than a single number. One example: 156–417 tok/s on B200. The same model and card vary by thirty to fifty per cent depending on the inference software and its version.

17

Skywork-13B— what GPU do I need to run it?

The smallest card in our catalogue that holds it is Xeon Phi 5110P, with a memory capacity of 8 GB. It runs the model at a compression of Q3_K_M using about 7.1 GB, and produces roughly 18.3 tokens per second. The number of cards able to run it in total: 509.

18

Skywork-13B— how fast is it on a GPU?

It depends on the card. The quickest we calculate is B200, at about 261 tokens per second; the slowest that still runs it manages considerably less. Reading speed is around ten tokens per second, and the number of cards clearing that: 459.

Source

Original publication

Record last updated 25 May 2026

The other direction

Looking at it from the other side?

This page starts from the model. If you already own a card and want to know everything it will run, start from the hardware instead.