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Can the Apple M2 Pro (32 GB) run SmolVLM 500M Instruct?

48 ptsUsable (C) · 48 of 100 points: Model quality 4.5/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 4.0/15

Yes, it runs well

Runs well. At F16 it needs about 3.7 GB of 21.4 GB usable, with an estimated speed of 97.3 tok/s.

Best quant
F16
Generation speed
97.3 tok/s
Prompt processing
8,267 tok/s
First token (1K prompt)
0.3 s
Largest safe context
8K

Download SmolVLM 500M Instruct

Recommended for the Apple M2 Pro (32 GB): F16. Every other quantization has its own download link in the table below.

Quantized files · GGUF

Works in LM Studio, llama.cpp, Jan and Ollama. No sign-in needed.

Download the F16 file (opens in a new tab)

huggingface.co/ggml-org/SmolVLM-500M-Instruct-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/ggml-org/SmolVLM-500M-Instruct-GGUF:F16

Original weights · Hugging Face

Full-precision files from Hugging Face, for fine-tuning, vLLM, Transformers.

huggingface.co/HuggingFaceTB/SmolVLM-500M-Instruct (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Links checked 1 week ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How the C grade is scored

Every result gets up to 100 points from four parts. The points decide the letter grade.

Model qualityEditorial quality tier of the model, scaled by the quantization or precision used.4.5 / 45
Memory fitFull marks when everything sits in GPU or unified memory; fewer when part spills to system RAM.25.0 / 25
SpeedGeneration speed against a 40 tokens/s target for LLMs, or render time against a target for image and video.15.0 / 15
Memory useRewards using the memory you have, so a bigger, better variant beats a tiny one that leaves most memory idle.4.0 / 15
Total48.5 / 10048 ptsUsable (C) · 48 of 100 points: Model quality 4.5/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 4.0/15

Grade scale: S 85+ · A 72+ · B 58+ · C 42+ · D 25+ · F under 25 points.

Every quantization on the Apple M2 Pro (32 GB)

Quant Memory needed Available Speed Fit Grade · points Download
Q2_K 2.9 GB 21.4 GB 681 tok/s Runs well 46 ptsUsable (C) · 46 of 100 points: Model quality 3.2/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 3.1/15 GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q3_K_M 2.9 GB 21.4 GB 536 tok/s Runs well 46 ptsUsable (C) · 46 of 100 points: Model quality 3.8/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 3.1/15 GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q4_K_M 3.0 GB 21.4 GB 415 tok/s Runs well 47 ptsUsable (C) · 47 of 100 points: Model quality 4.3/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 3.2/15 GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q5_K_M 3.0 GB 21.4 GB 342 tok/s Runs well 47 ptsUsable (C) · 47 of 100 points: Model quality 4.4/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 3.2/15 GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q6_K 3.1 GB 21.4 GB 288 tok/s Runs well 47 ptsUsable (C) · 47 of 100 points: Model quality 4.5/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 3.3/15 GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q8_0 3.2 GB 21.4 GB 211 tok/s Runs well 47 ptsUsable (C) · 47 of 100 points: Model quality 4.5/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 3.4/15 GGUF (opens in a new tab)
F16 3.7 GB 21.4 GB 97.3 tok/s Runs well 48 ptsUsable (C) · 48 of 100 points: Model quality 4.5/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 4.0/15 GGUF (opens in a new tab) Original weights (opens in a new tab)

Memory figures assume 8K of context. Longer conversations or documents grow the KV cache.

Other hardware that runs it

Estimates come from published hardware specs and our open formulas, not from running the model on your machine. Real speed varies with runtime, drivers and settings. Numbers marked “Measured” come from a linked benchmark.