Instructions to use openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B with libraries, inference providers, notebooks, and local apps. Follow these links to get started.
- Libraries
- Transformers
How to use openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B with Transformers:
# Use a pipeline as a high-level helper from transformers import pipeline pipe = pipeline("text-generation", model="openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B") messages = [ {"role": "user", "content": "Who are you?"}, ] pipe(messages)# Load model directly from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B") model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B") messages = [ {"role": "user", "content": "Who are you?"}, ] inputs = tokenizer.apply_chat_template( messages, add_generation_prompt=True, tokenize=True, return_dict=True, return_tensors="pt", ).to(model.device) outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=40) print(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0][inputs["input_ids"].shape[-1]:])) - Notebooks
- Google Colab
- Kaggle
- Local Apps
- vLLM
How to use openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B with vLLM:
Install from pip and serve model
# Install vLLM from pip: pip install vllm # Start the vLLM server: vllm serve "openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B" # Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API): curl -X POST "http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ --data '{ "model": "openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B", "messages": [ { "role": "user", "content": "What is the capital of France?" } ] }'Use Docker
docker model run hf.co/openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B
- SGLang
How to use openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B with SGLang:
Install from pip and serve model
# Install SGLang from pip: pip install sglang # Start the SGLang server: python3 -m sglang.launch_server \ --model-path "openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B" \ --host 0.0.0.0 \ --port 30000 # Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API): curl -X POST "http://localhost:30000/v1/chat/completions" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ --data '{ "model": "openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B", "messages": [ { "role": "user", "content": "What is the capital of France?" } ] }'Use Docker images
docker run --gpus all \ --shm-size 32g \ -p 30000:30000 \ -v ~/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface \ --env "HF_TOKEN=<secret>" \ --ipc=host \ lmsysorg/sglang:latest \ python3 -m sglang.launch_server \ --model-path "openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B" \ --host 0.0.0.0 \ --port 30000 # Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API): curl -X POST "http://localhost:30000/v1/chat/completions" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ --data '{ "model": "openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B", "messages": [ { "role": "user", "content": "What is the capital of France?" } ] }' - Docker Model Runner
How to use openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B with Docker Model Runner:
docker model run hf.co/openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B
GitHub Repo | Technical Report
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Introduction
BitCPM4-CANN is the first end-to-end 1.58-bit (ternary) large language model training system natively built on Huawei Ascend NPU. The system integrates quantization-aware training (QAT) into the Megatron-LM framework with MindSpeed acceleration, covering the full training stack from custom ternary operators to distributed parallel training on Ascend 910B.
We train a family of four models—BitCPM4-CANN-0.5B/1B/3B/8B—and evaluate them against their full-precision MiniCPM4 counterparts across 11 benchmarks. The 1B/3B/8B models retain 95.7%–97.2% of full-precision performance, while enabling approximately 6× memory reduction at inference time. QAT introduces only 5% training throughput overhead (148 vs. 155 TFLOP/s per NPU).
Key Features
- 🔬 1.58-Bit Ternary Quantization: Compresses model weights to ternary values {-1, 0, 1}, achieving ~90% bit-width reduction compared to BF16.
- 🖥️ Native Ascend NPU Training: First publicly reported 1.58-bit training effort on domestic NPU platform at 8B scale, establishing reusable low-bit training infrastructure for the Ascend ecosystem.
- ⚡ Minimal Training Overhead: Only 5% throughput degradation compared to full-precision training on Ascend 910B.
- 📦 ~6× Inference Memory Reduction: Enables longer contexts, more serving replicas, and edge deployment on consumer devices.
Important Note
The models in this repository are in pseudo-quantized (fake quantization) format. This means the weights are stored in standard floating-point format with ternary values already applied during training. You can load and run inference with these models exactly the same way as full-precision models—no special quantization libraries or custom kernels are required.
BitCPM4-CANN Model Family
| Model | HuggingFace | GGUF |
|---|---|---|
| BitCPM4-CANN-0.5B | openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-0.5B | openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-0.5B-gguf |
| BitCPM4-CANN-1B | openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B | openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B-gguf |
| BitCPM4-CANN-3B | openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-3B | openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-3B-gguf |
| BitCPM4-CANN-8B | openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-8B | openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-8B-gguf |
Usage
Inference with Transformers
Since BitCPM4-CANN models are in pseudo-quantized format, you can use them exactly like standard full-precision models:
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer
import torch
torch.manual_seed(0)
path = 'openbmb/BitCPM4-CANN-1B'
device = "cuda"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(path)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(path, torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16, device_map=device, trust_remote_code=True)
# User can directly use the chat interface
responds, history = model.chat(tokenizer, "Write an article about Artificial Intelligence.", temperature=0.7, top_p=0.7)
print(responds)
# User can also use the generate interface
# messages = [
# {"role": "user", "content": "Write an article about Artificial Intelligence."},
# ]
# prompt_text = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
# messages,
# tokenize=False,
# add_generation_prompt=True,
# )
# model_inputs = tokenizer([prompt_text], return_tensors="pt").to(device)
# model_outputs = model.generate(
# **model_inputs,
# max_new_tokens=1024,
# top_p=0.7,
# temperature=0.7
# )
# output_token_ids = [
# model_outputs[i][len(model_inputs[i]):] for i in range(len(model_inputs['input_ids']))
# ]
# responses = tokenizer.batch_decode(output_token_ids, skip_special_tokens=True)[0]
# print(responses)
Evaluation Results
Main Results
BitCPM4-CANN models are evaluated against their full-precision MiniCPM4 counterparts across 11 benchmarks spanning commonsense reasoning, domain knowledge, and mathematics & reasoning.
| Task | 8B FP | 8B Ternary | 3B FP | 3B Ternary | 1B FP | 1B Ternary | 0.5B FP | 0.5B Ternary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ARC-c | 87.46 | 86.10 | 80.34 | 78.98 | 64.41 | 67.12 | 51.86 | 50.51 |
| ARC-e | 95.06 | 93.47 | 92.77 | 88.36 | 79.89 | 79.01 | 71.78 | 65.08 |
| BoolQ | 84.89 | 83.39 | 79.85 | 77.89 | 68.38 | 65.50 | 62.29 | 43.55 |
| PIQA | 80.52 | 78.78 | 70.57 | 72.69 | 66.16 | 65.45 | 60.99 | 58.49 |
| WinoGrande | 63.30 | 61.17 | 58.41 | 52.96 | 51.62 | 53.28 | 51.07 | 51.54 |
| CMMLU | 80.62 | 78.92 | 78.11 | 76.53 | 74.57 | 67.42 | 65.22 | 60.49 |
| C-Eval | 81.36 | 77.50 | 75.85 | 75.89 | 73.25 | 65.96 | 66.11 | 60.74 |
| MMLU | 75.83 | 70.65 | 66.95 | 64.41 | 57.71 | 57.71 | 55.55 | 50.73 |
| MMLU-Redux | 77.14 | 69.85 | 65.82 | 60.07 | 54.80 | 54.16 | 48.00 | 43.79 |
| BBH | 76.72 | 70.70 | 68.29 | 68.30 | 64.40 | 60.40 | 49.87 | 47.44 |
| GSM8K | 91.51 | 85.75 | 81.64 | 79.45 | 63.15 | 61.56 | 52.08 | 39.42 |
| Average (11 tasks) | 81.31 | 77.84 | 74.42 | 72.32 | 65.30 | 63.42 | 57.71 | 51.98 |
| Retention | 95.7% | 97.2% | 97.1% | 90.1% |
Key Observations
- 1B and above achieve ≥95.7% retention: The 3B model achieves the highest retention at 97.2%, demonstrating that ternary QAT at this scale introduces minimal capability loss.
- 0.5B reveals scale-dependent sensitivity: The smallest model retains 90.1%, indicating that quantization perturbation is more damaging when model capacity is limited.
- 1:1 alignment with MiniCPM4: The matched evaluation enables direct substitution decisions—deployments can replace specific full-precision models with their ternary counterparts with clearly quantified trade-offs.
Training Efficiency
| Configuration | TFLOP/s per NPU | Overhead |
|---|---|---|
| Full-precision | 155 | — |
| Ternary QAT | 148 | 4.5% |
System-level throughput on 2-node 16-card Ascend 910B:
- 3B model: ~2700 tokens/s per card
- 8B model: ~1340 tokens/s per card
Technical Approach
BitCPM-CANN uses a ternary quantizer that maps each weight group to {-1, 0, 1} scaled by a group-wise factor, trained with Straight-Through Estimator (STE) for gradient flow. The training follows a two-stage strategy: complete QAT followed by post-training distillation, which avoids amplifying training instability during early training.
The system is built as a four-layer vertical stack on Ascend NPU:
- QAT Training Logic: Ternary quantizer with STE, pluggable quantization layers in Megatron-LM.
- Megatron-LM Quantized Model Layer: Tensor-parallel linear layers with integrated weight/activation quantizers.
- Framework Entry Layer:
torch_npuandmindspeed.megatron_adaptorinjection for NPU execution. - Ascend Software-Hardware Stack: MindSpeed, CANN, HCCL communication, Ascend 910B NPU hardware.
For full technical details, please refer to our Technical Report.
Statement
- As a language model, BitCPM4-CANN generates content by learning from a vast amount of text.
- However, it does not possess the ability to comprehend or express personal opinions or value judgments.
- Any content generated by BitCPM4-CANN does not represent the viewpoints or positions of the model developers.
- Therefore, when using content generated by BitCPM4-CANN, users should take full responsibility for evaluating and verifying it on their own.
LICENSE
- This repository and BitCPM4-CANN models are released under the Apache-2.0 License.
Citation
- Please cite our technical report if you find our work valuable.
@article{bitcpm4cann,
title={{BitCPM-CANN}: Native 1.58-Bit Large Language Model Training on Ascend NPU},
author={BitCPM Team},
year={2026}
}
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