Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small

Closed weights Cerebras Systems 1.3B parameters March 2023

No estimate

No hardware requirements for this model

The weights for this model have not been published, so it cannot be downloaded or run on your own hardware at any size. It is reachable only through its provider, and no graphics card changes that.

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
Cerebras Systems
Organisation type
Industry
Country
United States of America
Published
21 March 2023
Authors
Shreyas Saxena, Vithursan Thangarasa, Abhay Gupta, Sean Lie

What it does

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

Domain
Language
Task
Language modeling/generation, Question answering

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
1.3B

GPT-3 Small: 125M At 90% sparsity → ~1.25B total parameters At 75% sparsity → 125M * ksw^2 = 125M *(1/(1-0.75)) = 500M total pramters (I assume only 125M are active)

Training data
2,500,000,000 tokens

2.5B (table 13)

Epochs
1

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
1.9 × 10¹⁸ FLOP

6 FLOP / parameter / token * 125* 10^6 active parameters * 2.5 * 10^9 tokens = 1.875e+18 FLOP __________________ in the Algorithmic progress paper the estimation was 8.84 × 10^19 FLOP, they assumed WT-103 dataset (not mentioned in the paper) and different number of parameters (1.3* 10^9 - I am unsure where it comes from)

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
Cerebras CS-2

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
Closed — provider access only
Model access
Unreleased
Training code
Unreleased

paper has repo but no code for sparse GPT-3: https://github.com/CerebrasResearch/Sparse-IFT

How it is classified

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

Record confidence
Speculative
Citations
8
Benchmark data
Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small

Sources

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

Reference
Sparse Iso-FLOP Transformations for Maximizing Training Efficiency
Last updated
25 May 2026

What the numbers mean

Where it came from

Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small was published by Cerebras Systems, in United States of America, in March 2023. industry is the category the publisher falls under.

It works in Language, and is recorded as doing language modeling/generation, Question answering.

This is a closed model: the trained values stayed with whoever produced them, and there is no local version to run.

Training and provenance

Producing it required around 1.9 × 10¹⁸ FLOP of arithmetic, on Cerebras CS-2, which is a statement about the training budget rather than about inference.

The training set ran to roughly 2,500,000,000 tokens.

Answers

Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small — common questions

01

How much compute was used to train Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small?

Around 1.9 × 10¹⁸ FLOP, on Cerebras CS-2. 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.

02

What GPU do I need to run Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small?

None. Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small is a closed model — its weights were never published, so it cannot be downloaded or run on your own hardware at any price. It is reachable only through its provider.

03

Is Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small open source?

No. Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small has not had its weights published, so it exists only as a service controlled by its owner.

04

How many parameters does Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small have?

Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small has 1.3B parameters. GPT-3 Small: 125M At 90% sparsity → ~1.25B total parameters At 75% sparsity → 125M * ksw^2 = 125M *(1/(1-0.75)) = 500M total pramters (I assume only 125M are active). 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.

05

Who created Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small?

Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small was published by Cerebras Systems, based in United States of America, categorised as industry.

06

When was Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small released?

Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small was published in March 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.

07

What is Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small used for?

Sparse Wide GPT-3 Small works in Language, and is recorded as handling language modeling/generation, Question answering. These are the areas it was designed around; they describe intent rather than a hard boundary.

Source

Original publication

Record last updated 25 May 2026

The other direction

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