this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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LocalLLaMA

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Community to discuss about LLaMA, the large language model created by Meta AI.

This is intended to be a replacement for r/LocalLLaMA on Reddit.

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Training a model without a GPU (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 11 months ago by Matburnx@sh.itjust.works to c/localllama@sh.itjust.works
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Hi, I'm currently starting to learn how LLM works in depth, so I started using nanoGPT to understand how to train a model and I'd like to play around with the code a little more. So I set myself a goal to train a model that can write basic French, it doesn't to be coherent or deep in its writing, just French with correct grammar. I only have a laptop that doesn't have a proper GPU, so I can't really train a model with billions of parameters. Do you think it's possible without too much dataset or intensive training? Is it a better idea if I use something different from nanoGPT?

TLDR: I'd like to train my own LLM on my laptop which doesn't have a GPU. It's only for learning purpose, so my goal is that it can write basic French. Is it doable? If it is, do you have any tips to make this easier?

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[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

How did you determine the dataset size? I mean if it's just a few megabytes of French books, I'm not surprised you don't get any results out of that. And it also depends how you feed it in and what parameters you choose for training and model architecture. There are several scientific papers researching for example the needed dataset size to corresponding parameter count of the model.

Once you choose the correct dataset size, have a look at your loss graphs. Do they converge? Did you run training long enough? I suppose it should take weeks (to months?) on an (old) laptop CPU before you see any results, even at that model size.