Subformer (122M)

Closed weights National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST),University of Tokyo 122M parameters January 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
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST),University of Tokyo
Organisation type
Academia,Academia
Country
Japan
Published
1 January 2021
Authors
Machel Reid, Edison Marrese-Taylor, Yutaka Matsuo

What it does

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

Domain
Language
Task
Language modeling

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
122M

122M (Table 5)

Training data
tokens

"we use 8 GPUs with 3072 tokens per GPU and an update frequency of 3" "warming up the learning rate to 1.0 for 16K iterations, and then annealing for 270K iterations" 8*3072*286000/100000000 = 70.29 epochs

Epochs
70.29
Batch size
24,576

8*3072

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
5.1 × 10¹⁸ FLOP

6 FLOP/token/parameter * 122000000 parameters * 8 GPUs * 3072 tokens per batch per GPU * 286000 steps = 5.1450348e+18 FLOP

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
8
Power draw
4.9 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

code, but not for language modeling: https://github.com/machelreid/subformer/blob/master/README.md

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
60
Benchmark data
Subformer (122M)

Sources

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

Reference
Subformer: Exploring Weight Sharing for Parameter Efficiency in Generative Transformers
Last updated
25 May 2026

What the numbers mean

Background

Subformer (122M) was published by National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST),University of Tokyo, in the country recorded as Japan, during January 2021. The category the publisher falls under is academia,Academia.

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

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

How it was trained

The training run consumed about 5.1 × 10¹⁸ FLOP, on hardware recorded as NVIDIA V100. That figure measures what producing the model cost, and has no bearing on how fast it answers.

Answers

Subformer (122M) — common questions

01

Subformer (122M)— how much compute was used to train it?

Training consumed around 5.1 × 10¹⁸ FLOP, on hardware recorded as 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.

02

Subformer (122M)— what GPU do I need to run it?

None. This 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

Subformer (122M)— is it open source?

No. Its weights have not been published, so it exists only as a service controlled by its owner.

04

Subformer (122M)— how many parameters does it have?

It has a parameter count of 122M. 122M (Table 5). 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

Subformer (122M)— who created it?

It was published by National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST),University of Tokyo, based in Japan, an organisation categorised as academia,Academia.

06

Subformer (122M)— when was it released?

It was published in January 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.

07

Subformer (122M)— what is it used for?

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

Source

Original publication

Record last updated 25 May 2026

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