Model reference · open weights

SILMA

LLMs silma-ai Text gen 1 build Open, with conditions 1k dl/mo

SILMA is an open-weight language model from silma-ai. SILMA-9B-Instruct-v1.0 (BF16) weighs 18.5 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is 2× RTX 3060 12 GB.

For self-hosting, compare this build's requirements below with the GPU you plan to rent.

  • SILMA-9B-Instruct-v1.0 is a 9.2 billion parameter text-generation model developed by silma-ai, built on the Google Gemma foundation.
  • It supports Arabic and English with an 8192 token context length and is released under the Gemma license.
  • The model is designed for general text generation tasks, including chatbots and content creation, and requires a minimum of 16-24 GB of GPU memory for quantized inference.

Summary of the silma-ai/SILMA-9B-Instruct-v1.0 model card, 2026-10-01

What it is

Released bysilma-ai
Released2024-08-17
Parameters9.2B
VRAM18.5 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for SILMA-9B-Instruct-v1.0 (BF16)

18.5 GBweights, file size
172 MBcache per 1K tokens
1.4 GBwindow cache per request
868 MBruntime overhead, at least
8,192 tokenscontext max
CardRequests at onceContext maxMemory
8K each
RTX 3060 12 GB … RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB
2 smaller cards
RTX 3090 24 GB1all 8K23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GB1all 8K23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GB4all 8K31.0 GB
L40S 48 GB8all 8K44.0 GB
A100 80 GB20all 8K78.2 GB
H100 80 GB18all 8K78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB24all 8K93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified29all 8K107 GB
H200 141 GB40all 8K138 GB
B200 180 GB53all 8K176 GB
2× RTX 3060 12 GB
tensor parallel
1all 8K11.6 GB a card
2× RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB
tensor parallel
3all 8K15.4 GB a card
2× RTX 4090 24 GB
tensor parallel
9all 8K23.4 GB a card
2× RTX 3090 24 GB
tensor parallel
9all 8K23.4 GB a card
2× RTX 5090 32 GB
tensor parallel
14all 8K31.0 GB a card
Memory needed at each load
Requests at once8K tokens each
122.2 GB
533.4 GB
841.9 GB
1664.4 GB
32110 GB
64200 GB

One card, with vLLM's small-card settings.

From the model card

What silma-ai says about SILMA

Read the model card

SILMA.AI is a leading Generative AI startup dedicated to empowering Arabic speakers with state-of-the-art AI solutions.

🚀 Our Flagship Model: SILMA 1.0 🚀

  • SILMA 1.0 was the TOP-RANKED open-weights Arabic LLM (Until February 2025) with an impressive 9 billion parameter size, surpassing models that are over seven times larger 🏆

Important Tip: 💡 For RAG use-cases please use SILMA Kashif v1.0 as it has been specifically trained for Question Answering tasks.

What makes SILMA exceptional?

  • SIMLA is a small language model outperforming 72B models in most arabic language tasks, thus more practical for business use-cases
  • SILMA is built over the robust foundational models of Google Gemma, combining the strengths of both to provide you with unparalleled performance
  • SILMA is an open-weight model, free to use in accordance with our open license

👥 Our Team

We are a team of seasoned Arabic AI experts who understand the nuances of the language and cultural considerations, enabling us to build solutions that truly resonate with Arabic users.

Authors: silma.ai

Usage

Below we share some code snippets on how to get quickly started with running the model. First, install the Transformers library with:

pip install -U transformers sentencepiece

Then, copy the snippet from the section that is relevant for your usecase.

Running with the pipeline API
import torch
from transformers import pipeline

pipe = pipeline(
    "text-generation",
    model="silma-ai/SILMA-9B-Instruct-v1.0",
    model_kwargs={"torch_dtype": torch.bfloat16},
    device="cuda",  # replace with "mps" to run on a Mac device
)

messages = [
    {"role": "user", "content": "اكتب رسالة تعتذر فيها لمديري في العمل عن الحضور اليوم لأسباب مرضية."},
]

outputs = pipe(messages, max_new_tokens=256)
assistant_response = outputs[0]["generated_text"][-1]["content"].strip()
print(assistant_response)
  • Response:
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته

أودّ أن أعتذر عن عدم الحضور إلى العمل اليوم بسبب مرضي. أشعر بالسوء الشديد وأحتاج إلى الراحة. سأعود إلى العمل فور تعافيي.
شكراً لتفهمكم.

مع تحياتي،
[اسمك]
Running the model on a single / multi GPU
pip install accelerate
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM
import torch

model_id = "silma-ai/SILMA-9B-Instruct-v1.0"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    model_id,
    device_map="auto",
    torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,
)

messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": "أنت مساعد ذكي للإجابة عن أسئلة المستخدمين."},
    {"role": "user", "content": "أيهما أبعد عن الأرض, الشمس أم القمر؟"},
]

input_ids = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(messages, return_tensors="pt", return_dict=True).to("cuda")

outputs = model.generate(**input_ids, max_new_tokens=256)

print(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0]))
  • Response:
الشمس

You can ensure the correct chat template is applied by using tokenizer.apply_chat_template as follows:


from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM
import torch

model_id = "silma-ai/SILMA-9B-Instruct-v1.0"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    model_id,
    device_map="auto",
    torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,
)

messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": "أنت مساعد ذكي للإجابة عن أسئلة المستخدمين."},
    {"role": "user", "content": "اكتب كود بايثون لتوليد متسلسلة أرقام زوجية."},
]
input_ids = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(messages, return_tensors="pt", return_dict=True).to("cuda")

outputs = model.generate(**input_ids, max_new_tokens=256)
print(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0]).split("model")[-1])
  • Response:
def generate_even_numbers(n):
	"""
	This function generates a list of even numbers from 1 to n.
	Args:
		n: The upper limit of the range.

	Returns:
		A list of even numbers.
	"""
	return [i for i in range(1, n + 1) if i % 2 == 0]

# Example usage
n = 10
even_numbers = generate_even_numbers(n)
print(f"The first {n} even numbers are: {even_numbers}")
Quantized Versions through bitsandbytes
Using 8-bit precision (int8)
pip install bitsandbytes accelerate
# pip install bitsandbytes accelerate
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM, BitsAndBytesConfig

model_id = "silma-ai/SILMA-9B-Instruct-v1.0"
quantization_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_8bit=True)

tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    model_id,
    quantization_config=quantization_config,
)

messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": "أنت مساعد ذكي للإجابة عن أسئلة المستخدمين."},
    {"role": "user", "content": "اذكر خمس انواع فواكه بها نسب عالية من فيتامين ج."},
]
input_ids = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(messages, return_tensors="pt", return_dict=True).to("cuda")

outputs = model.generate(**input_ids, max_new_tokens=256)
print(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0]).split("model")[-1])
  • Response:
الليمون، البرتقال، الموز، الكيوي، الفراولة
Using 4-bit precision
# pip install bitsandbytes accelerate
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM, BitsAndBytesConfig

model_id = "silma-ai/SILMA-9B-Instruct-v1.0"
quantization_config = BitsAndBytesConfig(load_in_4bit=True)

tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    model_id,
    quantization_config=quantization_config,
)

messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": "أنت مساعد ذكي للإجابة عن أسئلة المستخدمين."},
    {"role": "user", "content": "في أي عام توفى صلاح الدين الأيوبي؟"},
]
input_ids = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(messages, return_tensors="pt", return_dict=True).to("cuda")

outputs = model.generate(**input_ids, max_new_tokens=256)
print(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0]).spl

Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.

Benchmarks

Reported results

As published on the model card: the maker's own numbers, not measured by AxForge.

TaskDatasetMetricScore
text-generationArabic Broad Benchmark (ABB)benchmark_score6.150
text-generationMMLU (Arabic)acc_norm52.550
text-generationAlGhafaacc_norm71.850
text-generationARC Challenge (Arabic)acc_norm78.190
text-generationACVAacc_norm78.890
text-generationArabic_EXAMSacc_norm51.400
text-generationARC Easyacc_norm86
text-generationBOOLQ (Arabic)acc_norm64.050
text-generationCOPA (Arabic)acc_norm78.890
text-generationHELLASWAG (Arabic)acc_norm47.640
text-generationOPENBOOK QA (Arabic)acc_norm72.930
text-generationPIQA (Arabic)acc_norm71.960
text-generationRACE (Arabic)acc_norm75.550
text-generationSCIQ (Arabic)acc_norm91.260
text-generationTOXIGEN (Arabic)acc_norm67.590
Text GenerationIFEval (0-Shot)strict accuracy58.420
Text GenerationBBH (3-Shot)normalized accuracy30.710
Text GenerationMATH Lvl 5 (4-Shot)exact match0
Text GenerationGPQA (0-shot)acc_norm7.380
Text GenerationMuSR (0-shot)acc_norm17.260
Text GenerationMMLU-PRO (5-shot)accuracy32.440
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