Organic Llamas have a rather restricted range, in nature: the Andes Mountains, and that’s it. Humans weren’t content to let the fluffy, friend-shaped creatures stay in their natural habitat, however, and they can now be found on every continent except Antarctica. The Llama2 Large Language Model is like that: while it may have started on a GPU somewhere, thanks to enterprising hackers like [Caio Madeira], who has ported Llama2 to the PlayStation Portable (PSP), the fluffiest LLM can be found just about anywhere.
Ultimately this project has its roots in Llama2.c by [karpathy], a project we’ve seen used on Pentium II under Windows 98, DOS machines running 486 processors, and even the venerable Commodore 64, of all impossible things. Now, it’s the PSP’s turn. This implementation uses the same 260K tinystories model as the C64 port, upon which it is based. Of course the PSP’s RAM has room for a much larger model, but [Ciao] apparently prefers to run the tiny model faster on this less-ancient gaming hardware.
Its getting to the point that it’s harder to find systems that won’t run LLMs than those that do. Given that Llama2 seems to be the new DOOM, it’s probably only a matter of time before their virtual fur is all over all our old equipment. Fortunately for allergy sufferers, virtual fur cannot trigger a histamine response.
If you know of another system getting LLMs (Alpaca-adjacent or otherwise), send in a tip.
The coherence of the output 🤣
I helicateldivelostach you with your weemanes observation!
AllmHail thee Hey-eye Jomes Juyce! FILLIGAN’S RAKE!
“Its getting to the point that it’s harder to find systems that won’t run LLMs than those that do.” Only if you misclassify tiny, unusable novelty models as large language models.
Large relative to what? I’ve got a pretty big multilayer percepron I’d love to sell you.
Given that Small Language Models exist, I don’t think it takes shifting perspective when things are already so neatly defined. I however would classify anything under 1b parameters as a MicroLM.
Tangent
I also think that LLMs are mostly bloat. Given that M$FTs Phi models outperform the LLMs in everything except world knowledge. If the LLM team there put their minds to it, I bet they could build an agentic model that outperforms Sonnet and can run locally (since neither Sonnet, Opus or Chat can be)
It’s a shame that the PSP’s PowerVR GPU is so cursed and will never see an open source driver. Could otherwise have had GPU acceleration for this model.
(Yes, very recent GPUs have open drivers, but they’re not compatible at all with the older architectures that didn’t come out in the last 5 years.)
The PSP is a custom PS2-like GPU that has to be programmed manually and directly, with no driver layer. The Vita is the one with the PowerVR GPU.
Soooo you’re saying there’s a chance…?
I believe llamas have wool….even used for cloth making !
Heh, neat to see people still developing homebrew for this thing. The PSP and Rockbox were my introduction to this world as a kid. They’re what eventually sparked my interest in Linux, and DIY tinkering in general. I’m still friends with people from old PSP modding communities, and it’ll always be the console I have the best memories of.
PSP is a great device, I play more PSP on my Vita than Vita games.
My fat PSP has a cracked screen and needs a new battery, someday I’ll get around to it.
Same! I was in middle school at the time and remember mowing so. many. lawns. So I could buy one, with that $250 finally in hand, I begged for a ride to BestBuy and… Then I learned about taxes through the eyes of a teen who watched their dreams be crushed in an instant! That excitement turned disappointment honestly stuck with me like some kind of PTSD lol.
A MONTH later, and I finally had it!! Couldn’t afford any games though, so I ran that demo RIIIIIDGE RACER UMD into dust (not least because of the embedded web browser and being a teenager without a PC lol). Next investment in 7th grade was a WRT54GL that I immediately flashed DDWRT onto (while trying in vain to explain to my family what I was even doing 😂).
Then came the hacking scene 🤤 I wish I could remember the old (now defunct) forums I used to spend my life on, or studying MIPS and RISC processor architectures. Don’t forget the native 2.0 browser! And the serial port headphone accessories jack, and of course that Pandora Battery.
What a time to be alive…
Early highschool I was running Debian and FreeNAS and was the first at school with a 1TB HDD and 4GB flashdrive (that I still own!). Got my A+ and Network+ certificate all in highschool too.
Now, I’ve been unemployed since last year and wish I never went into Windows administration because it’s truly the bane of my existence…
Anyways, I wish I could find mine. Oddly I found the charger and DUAL μSD adapter card, but that’s all. It’s a launch PSP 1001 and I’m worried about that battery cell because I remember naively shimming the expanded battery into place 😬
Alright this is long enough lol no one is gonna read this anyways 🙃 but it’s the first legitimate smile I’ve had in a long time, so thank you ♥️
Google just release Gemma 3 270M, it won’t run on a PSP, but it will probably surface on a lot of other devices to run locally and the quality is really impressive for such a small model.