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Bonsai 2 27B Squeezes Qwen3.8 27B Into 5.9GB, but Stock llama.cpp Can't Run It

This story is from 2026-09-18. It is preserved in the archive; the latest stories are on the live feed.

PrismML has released Bonsai 2 27B, a ternary-quantized version of Qwen3.8 27B that compresses a 53.8GB FP16 model down to 5.9GB while retaining 98.2% of the original's benchmark score. The catch: the release only works with a patched llama.cpp fork carrying custom ternary hybrid-attention kernels —…

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  1. 2026-09-18 09:15 · DEV Community — Machine Learning
    Bonsai 2 27B Squeezes Qwen3.8 27B Into 5.9GB, but Stock llama.cpp Can't Run It

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