Can I run GLM 5.3 Flash (MoE) locally?
GLM 5.3 Flash (MoE) has 321.32 billion parameters (Hugging Face). At the popular Q4_K_M quantization it needs roughly 205.2 GB of GPU memory ESTIMATE. It has been on Hugging Face since 2026-08-25. It's a mixture-of-experts model: all weights must fit in memory, but it generates faster than a dense model of the same size.
Memory needed by quantization
| Quant | Weights | Total needed (est.) |
|---|---|---|
| IQ1_S | 62.7 GB | 66.4 GB |
| IQ2_XXS | 82.7 GB | 87.5 GB |
| IQ2_M | 108.4 GB | 114.5 GB |
| Q2_K | 127.3 GB | 134.3 GB |
| IQ3_XXS | 122.9 GB | 129.7 GB |
| Q3_K_S | 146.6 GB | 154.6 GB |
| IQ3_M | 147.0 GB | 155.0 GB |
| Q3_K_M | 160.7 GB | 169.3 GB |
| IQ4_XS | 170.7 GB | 179.9 GB |
| Q4_0 | 180.7 GB | 190.4 GB |
| Q4_K_M | 194.8 GB | 205.2 GB |
| MXFP4 | 186.0 GB | 195.9 GB |
| Q5_K_M | 228.5 GB | 240.6 GB |
| Q6_K | 263.5 GB | 277.3 GB |
| Q8_0 | 341.4 GB | 359.1 GB |
| F16 | 642.6 GB | 675.4 GB |
KV cache by context length ESTIMATE
| Context | f16 | q8_0 | q4_0 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4k | 0.05 GB | 0.02 GB | 0.01 GB |
| 8k | 0.09 GB | 0.05 GB | 0.03 GB |
| 16k | 0.18 GB | 0.10 GB | 0.05 GB |
| 32k | 0.37 GB | 0.20 GB | 0.10 GB |
| 64k | 0.74 GB | 0.39 GB | 0.21 GB |
| 128k | 1.48 GB | 0.78 GB | 0.42 GB |
From config.json: 11 KV-caching attention layers (MLA, 512-dim compressed cache). Max context 1024k. The tables above assume 4k context.
Which GPUs and Macs can run it?
✅ fits · ⚠️ fits with little headroom · ❌ doesn't fit on this one device (multiple GPUs or RAM offload may work; check your setup). Apple Silicon assumes macOS lets the GPU use ~67–75% of unified memory. All fit verdicts are estimates.
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