GLM-5.3 Flash VRAM requirements

GLM-5.3 Flash has 321.3B parameters, of which about 18B are used per token; all 288 experts still have to be in memory. With an 8K-token context and one request it needs about 200 GB of GPU memory at Q4_K_M, 330 GB at FP8 and 659 GB at FP16/BF16. The published weights take 306 GB (FP8). No single GPU in the table holds it at Q4_K_M; it needs a multi-GPU setup.

Open GLM-5.3 Flash in the calculator

VRAM by quantization

Weights plus the KV cache for 8,192 tokens in FP16 and the runtime overhead (0.5 GB plus 10%). Each row opens the calculator with that setting. What the GGUF names mean.

PrecisionWeightsTotalSmallest setup
As published (FP8) 306 GB 337 GB 2 × B200
FP16 / BF16 599 GB 659 GB 4 × B200
FP8 / INT8 299 GB 330 GB 2 × B200
INT4 (AWQ / GPTQ) 159 GB 175 GB B200
GGUF Q8_0 318 GB 350 GB 2 × B200
GGUF Q6_K 245 GB 271 GB 2 × H200
GGUF Q5_K_M 212 GB 234 GB 2 × H200
GGUF Q4_K_M 181 GB 200 GB 2 × H200
GGUF Q3_K_M 146 GB 161 GB B200
GGUF Q2_K 125 GB 138 GB H200

KV cache at long context

11 of its 45 layers use multi-head latent attention and 34 are linear-attention layers with no growing cache. Each extra token of context adds 12 KB of FP16 cache per request. How the KV cache works.

ContextKV cache, FP16KV cache, FP8Total at Q4_K_M
4K tokens 50 MB 28 MB 200 GB
32K tokens 396 MB 220 MB 200 GB
128K tokens 1.55 GB 880 MB 201 GB
1M tokens 12.4 GB 6.88 GB 213 GB

Which GPUs can run GLM-5.3 Flash

With 8,192 tokens of context. Several GPUs means one tensor-parallel group of 2, 4 or 8 cards.

GPUMemoryQ4_K_MFP8
RTX 3060 12 GB Needs more than 8 Needs more than 8
RTX 4060 Ti 16GB 16 GB Needs more than 8 Needs more than 8
RTX 3090 / 4090 24 GB Needs more than 8 Needs more than 8
RTX 5090 32 GB Needs 8 Needs more than 8
A100 40GB 40 GB Needs 8 Needs more than 8
Mac, 64 GB unified memory about 75% of it is usable by the GPU by default 48 GB Needs 8 Needs 8
L40S / RTX 6000 Ada 48 GB Needs 8 Needs 8
A100 / H100 80GB 80 GB Needs 4 Needs 8
Mac, 128 GB unified memory about 75% of it is usable by the GPU by default 96 GB Needs 4 Needs 4
H200 141 GB Needs 2 Needs 4
B200 180 GB Needs 2 Needs 2

How fast GLM-5.3 Flash writes

Tokens per second for one request with 8,192 tokens of context, estimated from memory bandwidth and the parameters read per token. A dash means it does not fit on one card. Try other settings in the speed calculator.

HardwareBandwidthQ4_K_MFP8
RTX 3060 12GB 360 GB/s — —
RTX 4090 1,008 GB/s — —
RTX 5090 1,792 GB/s — —
M4 Max Mac (128 GB) 546 GB/s — —
M3 Ultra Mac Studio (512 GB) 819 GB/s 22–37 13–22
H100 SXM 3,350 GB/s — —
H200 4,800 GB/s — —

Longest context on one GPU

How many tokens of context fit on a single card with one request and an FP16 KV cache. "Full" means the model's whole context window fits.

GPUMemoryQ4_K_MQ8_0FP8
RTX 3060 12 GB No No No
RTX 4060 Ti 16GB 16 GB No No No
RTX 3090 / 4090 24 GB No No No
RTX 5090 32 GB No No No
A100 40GB 40 GB No No No
Mac, 64 GB unified memory 48 GB No No No
L40S / RTX 6000 Ada 48 GB No No No
A100 / H100 80GB 80 GB No No No
Mac, 128 GB unified memory 96 GB No No No
H200 141 GB No No No
B200 180 GB No No No

Model details

Parameters
321.3B (321,323,031,390)
Experts
288 routed experts, all loaded
Active per token
18B
Layers
11 of its 45 layers use multi-head latent attention and 34 are linear-attention layers with no growing cache
Attention cache
512 values per token (compressed latent)
Context length
1,048,576 tokens
Published weights
306 GB (FP8)
On Hugging Face
zai-org/GLM-5.3-Flash

Other models

Numbers read from the model files on Hugging Face on .