Google launches AI model Gemma 3 that can run on 1 GPU

Google on Wednesday launched its latest open-source models called Gemma 3, which can run on a single graphics processing unit or tensor processing unit.

The Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) unit said Gemma 3 is a collection of lightweight, state-of-the-art open models built from the same research and technology which powers its Gemini 2.0 models.

“Our new open models are incredibly efficient – the largest 27B model runs on just one H100 GPU. You’d need at least 10x the compute to get similar performance from other models,” said Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Gemma 3 will come in 1B, 4B, 12B and 27B sizes, allowing users to choose the best model for their specific hardware and performance needs, according to the company.

“They are designed to run fast, directly on devices — from phones and laptops to workstations — helping developers create AI applications, said Clement Farabet, vice president of Research, Google DeepMind and Tris Warkentin, director, Google DeepMind in a blog post on Wednesday.

Google’s Gemma 3 (Image courtesy Google’s blog post)

Google noted that Gemma 3 outperforms Meta Platforms (META) Llama-405B, DeepSeek-V3 (DEEPSEEK) and OpenAI’s o3-mini in preliminary human preference evaluations on LMArena’s leaderboard.

Only Deepseek’s R1 seems to have a better score than Gemma 3, according to the ranking.

Gemma 3 offers out-of-the-box support for over 35 languages and pretrained support for over 140 languages.

In addition, Google is also launching ShieldGemma 2, a 4B image safety checker built on the Gemma 3 foundation. ShieldGemma 2 provides a ready-made solution for image safety, outputting safety labels across three categories — dangerous content, sexually explicit and violence, according to the company.

Google also introduced the Gemma 3 Academic Program, wherein academic researchers can apply for Google Cloud credits (worth $10,000 per award) to advance their Gemma 3-based research. The application forms will remain open for four weeks.

Source: seekingalpha.com