Model reference · open weights
C-RADIO is an open-weight embedding model from NVIDIA. C-RADIO (FP32) weighs 1.3 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 3060 12 GB.
For self-hosting, compare this build's requirements below with the GPU you plan to rent.
Summary of the nvidia/C-RADIO model card, 2026-10-01
What it is
| Released by | NVIDIA |
|---|---|
| Released | 2024-05-29 |
| Parameters | 652M |
| VRAM | 1.3 GB for the weights |
What it runs on
| Card | Runs | Memory |
|---|---|---|
| RTX 3060 12 GB | fits | 11.6 GB |
| RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB | fits | 15.4 GB |
| RTX 3090 24 GB | fits | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 4090 24 GB | fits | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 5090 32 GB | fits | 31.0 GB |
| L40S 48 GB | fits | 44.0 GB |
| A100 80 GB | fits | 78.2 GB |
| H100 80 GB | fits | 78.1 GB |
| RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB | fits | 93.8 GB |
| DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified | fits | 107 GB |
| H200 141 GB | fits | 138 GB |
| B200 180 GB | fits | 176 GB |
From the model card
This model performs visual feature extraction. For instance, RADIO generates image embeddings that can be used by a downstream model to classify images.
[License] This model is governed by the NVIDIA Open Model License Agreement.
AM-RADIO: Agglomerative Vision Foundation Model - Reduce All Domains Into One
PHI-S: Distribution Balancing for Label-Free Multi-Teacher Distillation
RADIO Amplified: Improved Baselines for Agglomerative Vision Foundation Models
Architecture Type: Neural Network Network Architecture: Vision Transformer
Input Type(s): Image Input Format(s): Red, Green, Blue (RGB) pixel values in [0, 1] range. Input Parameters: Two Dimensional (2D) Other Properties Related to Input: Image resolutions up to 2048x2028 in increments of 16 pixels
Output Type(s): Embeddings Output Format: Tensor Output Parameters: 2D Other Properties Related to Output: Downstream model required to leverage image features
RADIO will return a tuple with two tensors.
The summary is similar to the cls_token in ViT and is meant to represent the general concept of the entire image.
It has shape (B,C) with B being the batch dimension, and C being some number of channels.
The spatial_features represent more localized content which should be suitable for dense tasks such as semantic segmentation, or for integration into an LLM.
import torch
from PIL import Image
from transformers import AutoModel, CLIPImageProcessor
hf_repo = "nvidia/C-RADIO"
image_processor = CLIPImageProcessor.from_pretrained(hf_repo)
model = AutoModel.from_pretrained(hf_repo, trust_remote_code=True)
model.eval().cuda()
image = Image.open('./assets/radio.png').convert('RGB')
pixel_values = image_processor(images=image, return_tensors='pt', do_resize=True).pixel_values
pixel_values = pixel_values.cuda()
summary, features = model(pixel_values)
Spatial features have shape (B,T,D) with T being the flattened spatial tokens, and D being the channels for spatial features. Note that C!=D in general.
Converting to a spatial tensor format can be done using the downsampling size of the model, combined with the input tensor shape. For RADIO, the patch size is 16.
from einops import rearrange
spatial_features = rearrange(spatial_features, 'b (h w) d -> b d h w', h=x.shape[-2] // patch_size, w=x.shape[-1] // patch_size)
The resulting tensor will have shape (B,D,H,W), as is typically seen with computer vision models.
Runtime Engine(s):
Supported Hardware Microarchitecture Compatibility:
[Preferred/Supported] Operating System(s):
C-RADIO.
Link: https://huggingface.co/nvidia/C-RADIO
NV-CC-Img-Text-Dataset ** Data Collection Method by dataset
Link: ImageNet ** Data Collection Method by dataset
Properties: This dataset spans 1000 object classes and contains 1,281,167 training images, 50,000 validation images and 100,000 test images.
Engine: PyTorch Test Hardware: A100
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Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.