IBM-5
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
- IBM
- Organisation type
- Industry
- Country
- United States of America
- Published
- 15 June 1993
- Authors
- Peter F. Brown, Stephen A. Della Pietra, Vincent J. Della Pietra, Robert L. Mercer
What it does
The problem areas the model was built for. A model can carry several of each.
- Domain
- Language
- Task
- Translation
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
- 1.7M
- Training data
- 28,850,104 tokens
The model is initiallized with 2.44E+09 translation probabilities, which are progressively culled until 1,658,364 remain. There are other parameters in the models (eg the fertility probabilities that relate each word in the input to the number of words it will align to) but the parameter count is dominated by the translation probabilities.
"They used the algorithm to extract a large number of translations from several years of the proceedings of the Canadian parliament. From these translations, we have chosen as our training data those for which both the English sentence and the French sentence are 30 or fewer words in length. This is a collection of 1,778,620 translations."
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
- Citations
- 5,752
Sources
Where this record came from and when it was last checked.
- Reference
- The Mathematics of Statistical Machine Translation: Parameter Estimation
- Last updated
- 28 November 2025
What the numbers mean
Background
IBM-5 was published by IBM, in United States of America, in June 1993. It comes out of industry.
It works in Language, and is recorded as doing translation.
Its weights were never published, so it can only be reached through its provider. No graphics card changes that.
What went into building it
Around 28,850,104 tokens went into training it.
Its inclusion criterion is highly cited.
Answers
IBM-5 — common questions
When was IBM-5 released?
IBM-5 was published in June 1993. Capability per parameter has improved considerably since, so a newer model of the same size is often the better use of the same hardware.
What is IBM-5 used for?
IBM-5 works in Language, and is recorded as handling translation. Models frequently carry more than one of each, and the tags describe purpose rather than capability limits.
What GPU do I need to run IBM-5?
None. IBM-5 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.
Is IBM-5 open source?
The licensing for IBM-5 was never recorded in our source data. We treat unstated licensing as closed, because an unrecorded licence is not one to rely on.
How many parameters does IBM-5 have?
IBM-5 has 1.7M parameters. The model is initiallized with 2.44E+09 translation probabilities, which are progressively culled until 1,658,364 remain. There are other parameters in the models (eg the fertility probabilities that relate each word in the input to the number of words it will align to) but the parameter count is dominated by the translation probabilities. 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.
Who created IBM-5?
IBM-5 was published by IBM, based in United States of America, categorised as industry.
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.