Someone got an LLM running on a Commodore 64 from 1982, and it runs as well
10 comments
·May 18, 2025Quarrel
I've read the criticisms here, but well, as someone whose first computer was a C64, this is cool as hell.
Like, what?!
On an 8-bit, 64Kb, ~1MHz CPU!
Amazing.
Sure, there are too many caveats, but this isn't really about making this a viable modern alternative.
It's just about, well, being very cool? Nostalgic!
And in that, I think it succeeds.
JPLeRouzic
Here is the repo:
Leynos
0.002 tokens per second
JPLeRouzic
Given that it uses a CPU that is one millionth slower than a modern CPU, its performance is impressive.
oac
It runs a model with 260K params, so hardly a "Large" LM. Nevertheless, a cool project.
aaronharnly
And also not exactly a Commodore 64 is it, since it requires an addon with 30x the RAM. Still very cool and impressive though!
actionfromafar
It's a borderline thing. The official Commodore REU only supported 8x the RAM. But you could modify it yourself to 32x. Creative Micro Design also had the third party 1750 REU which supported 32x RAM. (2 megabytes.)
So it is somewhat period accurate, albeit very expensive at the time.
robertlagrant
Imagine if someone had run that LLM on that hardware in the 1980s, though. Incredible!
(Probably couldn't have trained the model, but still.)
If anyone wants to try it with an esp32:
https://github.com/DaveBben/esp32-llm
needs a board with PSRAM but they are surprisingly plenty these days - almost standard. I tried it a few months back.