Model Weights

Parameters learned during training that define a model’s behavior. Stored in files (e.g., .bin, .pt) and loaded for inference. Size directly impacts computational requirements (e.g., 20B parameters ≈ 40GB storage).

Key Characteristics

  • Open-weight models (e.g., gpt-oss-20b) publicly share weights while keeping training code proprietary
  • Local deployment requires downloading weights (e.g., via Hugging Face Hub)
  • Inference executes using weights without cloud dependency; loading/running involves inference engines, memory-mapping, and performance optimization rather than simple file execution (see 2026 04 22 LLM Inference Engines Memory Mapping and Performance Optimization)

Recent Developments

Source Notes

Source Notes