GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K)

Closed weights Microsoft 117M parameters August 2021

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
Microsoft
Organisation type
Industry
Country
United States of America
Published
13 August 2021
Authors
Conglong Li, Minjia Zhang, Yuxiong He

What it does

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

Domain
Language
Task
Language modeling/generation

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
117M

batch size 512, 300K total training steps (157B tokens)

Training data
tokens

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
1.1 × 10²⁰ FLOP

6ND formula: 6*157000000000*117000000=1.10214e+20

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 V100
Chips used
128
Power draw
77.6 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
Closed — provider access only
Model access
Unreleased
Training code
Unreleased

there's a repo for the technique but I don't see training code for this model: https://github.com/microsoft/DeepSpeed

How it is classified

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

Record confidence
Confident
Citations
55
Benchmark data
GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K)

Sources

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

Reference
Curriculum Learning: A Regularization Method for Efficient and Stable Billion-Scale GPT Model Pre-Training
Last updated
25 May 2026

What the numbers mean

What this model is

GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) was published by Microsoft, in United States of America, in August 2021. The organisation is categorised as industry.

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

Because the weights are not available, none of the hardware figures elsewhere on this site apply to it.

How it was trained

Producing it required around 1.1 × 10²⁰ FLOP of arithmetic, on NVIDIA V100, which is a statement about the training budget rather than about inference.

Answers

GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) — common questions

01

Who created GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K)?

GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) was published by Microsoft, based in United States of America, categorised as industry.

02

When was GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) released?

GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) was published in August 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.

03

What is GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) used for?

GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) works in Language, and is recorded as handling language modeling/generation. Models frequently carry more than one of each, and the tags describe purpose rather than capability limits.

04

How much compute was used to train GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K)?

Around 1.1 × 10²⁰ FLOP, on NVIDIA V100. 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.

05

What GPU do I need to run GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K)?

None. GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) 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.

06

Is GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) open source?

No. GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) has not had its weights published, so it exists only as a service controlled by its owner.

07

How many parameters does GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) have?

GPT-2 (117M, SLW 110K) has 117M parameters. batch size 512, 300K total training steps (157B tokens). 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.

Source

Original publication

Record last updated 25 May 2026

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