AlphaFold-Multimer

Open weights Google DeepMind,DeepMind October 2021

No estimate

No hardware requirements for this model

This model's weights are open, but no parameter count has been published for it. Every memory and speed figure starts from that number, so we would rather show nothing than a fabricated estimate.

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
Google DeepMind,DeepMind
Organisation type
Industry,Industry
Country
United States of America, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Published
4 October 2021
Authors
Richard Evans, Michael O’Neill, Alexander Pritzel, Natasha Antropova, Andrew Senior, Tim Green, Augustin Žídek, Russ Bates, Sam Blackwell, Jason Yim, Olaf Ronneberger, Sebastian Bodenstein, Michal Zielinski, Alex Bridgland, Anna Potapenko, Andrew Cowie, Kathryn Tunyasuvunakool, Rishub Jain, Ellen Clancy, Pushmeet Kohli, John Jumper and Demis Hassabis

What it does

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

Domain
Biology
Task
Protein folding prediction, Proteins
Base model
AlphaFold 2

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.

Training data
56,573,952 tokens

See: https://www.rcsb.org/stats/growth/growth-released-structures for 2018 "We train the model to convergence (approximately 10M samples, for 2 weeks) across 128 TPUv3 cores with a batch size of 1 per TPU core. Then we halve the learning rate and double the number of sequences fed into the MSA stack before running two separate fine-tuning stages (one further day of training each)" 10000000/147328 ~ 68 epochs

Epochs
68

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
4.4 × 10²¹ FLOP

Section: 2.5. Training Regimen "We train the model to convergence (approximately 10M samples, for 2 weeks) across 128 TPUv3 cores [...]. Then we [...] run two separate fine-tuning stages (one further day of training each)" Assuming: FP16 and utilization 0.4 Calculation: (14+2) days * 24 hours/day * 60 min/hour * 60 sec/min * (128 TPU cores/2 cores per chip) * 1.23e14 FLOP/s per chip * 0.4 utilization = 4.35e21 FLOPs

How it was established
Hardware

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
Google TPU v3
Chips used
64
Chip-hours
24,576
Wall-clock time
384 hours (16 days)

Section: 2.5. Training Regimen "We train the model to convergence (approximately 10M samples, for 2 weeks) across 128 TPUv3 cores [...]. Then we [...] run two separate fine-tuning stages (one further day of training each)"

Power draw
58.1 kW
Compute cost
$7,966

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 (unrestricted)
Training code
Unreleased

While the AlphaFold code is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License, the AlphaFold parameters and CASP15 prediction data are made available under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license https://github.com/google-deepmind/alphafold

How it is classified

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

Why it is tracked
Highly cited,SOTA improvement

"On a benchmark dataset of 17 heterodimer proteins without templates (introduced in [2]) we achieve at least medium accuracy (DockQ [3] ≥ 0.49) on 14 targets and high accuracy (DockQ ≥ 0.8) on 6 targets, compared to 9 targets of at least medium accuracy and 4 of high accuracy for the previous state of the art system (an AlphaFold-based system from [2])" "For heteromeric interfaces we successfully predict the interface (DockQ ≥ 0.23) in 67% of cases, and produce high accuracy predictions (DockQ …

Record confidence
Confident
Citations
2,694

Sources

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

Reference
Protein complex prediction with AlphaFold-Multimer
Last updated
1 January 2026

What the numbers mean

Background

AlphaFold-Multimer was published by Google DeepMind,DeepMind, in United States of America, in October 2021. The organisation is categorised as industry,Industry.

It works in Biology, and is recorded as doing protein folding prediction, Proteins.

It is derived from AlphaFold 2 rather than trained from scratch, which is the usual way a specialised model is produced.

Published weights mean the model runs on your machine rather than someone else's, which is what makes the hardware question below answerable at all.

How it was trained

Training it took roughly 4.4 × 10²¹ FLOP of computation, on Google TPU v3 — a measure of what producing the model cost, not of how fast it answers.

The training set ran to roughly 56,573,952 tokens.

It is tracked in the underlying dataset for one reason in particular: highly cited,SOTA improvement.

Answers

AlphaFold-Multimer — common questions

01

What is AlphaFold-Multimer used for?

AlphaFold-Multimer works in Biology, and is recorded as handling protein folding prediction, Proteins. These are the areas it was designed around; they describe intent rather than a hard boundary.

02

Where can I download AlphaFold-Multimer?

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

03

How much compute was used to train AlphaFold-Multimer?

Around 4.4 × 10²¹ FLOP, on Google TPU v3. 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.

04

What GPU do I need to run AlphaFold-Multimer?

We cannot say. AlphaFold-Multimer has open weights, but no parameter count has been published for it, and every memory and speed calculation starts from that number. We would rather show nothing than a fabricated estimate.

05

Is AlphaFold-Multimer open source?

Its weights are published, so AlphaFold-Multimer 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.

06

How many parameters does AlphaFold-Multimer have?

No parameter count has been published for AlphaFold-Multimer, which is why no memory or speed figure appears on this page.

07

Who created AlphaFold-Multimer?

AlphaFold-Multimer was published by Google DeepMind,DeepMind, based in United States of America, categorised as industry,Industry.

08

When was AlphaFold-Multimer released?

AlphaFold-Multimer was published in October 2021. Capability per parameter has improved considerably since, so a newer model of the same size is often the better use of the same hardware.

Source

Original publication

Record last updated 1 January 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.