Megatron-LM (2.5B)

Closed weights NVIDIA 2.5B parameters September 2019

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
NVIDIA
Organisation type
Industry
Country
United States of America
Published
17 September 2019
Authors
Mohammad Shoeybi, Mostofa Patwary, Raul Puri, Patrick LeGresley, Jared Casper, Bryan Catanzaro

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
2.5B
Training data
tokens
Epochs
3.4

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
2.4 × 10²¹ FLOP

300k steps, batch size 512, sequence length 1024 Training tokens: 300000*512*1024=157286400000 Epochs: 157286400000/46400000000=3.4 Training FLOP: 6*2500000000*157286400000=2.359296e+21

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
78.8 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
Open source

code (2.5B model is a GPT model): https://github.com/NVIDIA/Megatron-LM?tab=readme-ov-file#megatron-overview open license: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Megatron-LM?tab=License-1-ov-file#readme

How it is classified

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

Record confidence
Likely
Citations
2,766
Benchmark data
Megatron-LM (2.5B)

Sources

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

Reference
Megatron-LM: Training Multi-Billion Parameter Language Models Using Model Parallelism
Last updated
25 May 2026

What the numbers mean

Background

Megatron-LM (2.5B) was published by NVIDIA, in United States of America, in September 2019. 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.

Training and provenance

The training run consumed about 2.4 × 10²¹ FLOP, on NVIDIA V100. That figure describes the cost of creating it and has no bearing on how quickly it generates text.

Answers

Megatron-LM (2.5B) — common questions

01

What is Megatron-LM (2.5B) used for?

Megatron-LM (2.5B) works in Language, and is recorded as handling language modeling/generation. These are the areas it was designed around; they describe intent rather than a hard boundary.

02

How much compute was used to train Megatron-LM (2.5B)?

Around 2.4 × 10²¹ 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.

03

What GPU do I need to run Megatron-LM (2.5B)?

None. Megatron-LM (2.5B) 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.

04

Is Megatron-LM (2.5B) open source?

No. Megatron-LM (2.5B) has not had its weights published, so it exists only as a service controlled by its owner.

05

How many parameters does Megatron-LM (2.5B) have?

Megatron-LM (2.5B) has 2.5B parameters. 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.

06

Who created Megatron-LM (2.5B)?

Megatron-LM (2.5B) was published by NVIDIA, based in United States of America, categorised as industry.

07

When was Megatron-LM (2.5B) released?

Megatron-LM (2.5B) was published in September 2019. 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 25 May 2026

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