Files
llama.cpp/README.md
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680a9ae63d cmake : introduce semantic versioning (#26839)
* cmake : introduce semantic versioning (wip)

This commit introduces semantic versioning to llama.cpp.

* squash! cmake : introduce semantic versioning (wip)

* cmake : update test-cmake README notes [no ci]

* include libmtmd in output so show its semversioned

* ci : add make-release workflow

* ci : fix build number check in build-cmake-pkg.yml

* examples : remove trailing whitespace

* ci : abort if upstream ggml version does not exist

* ci : extract step contents into scripts

* ci : add GGML_NATIVE=OFF to ubuntu job

* examples : remove CI build information from test-cmake [no ci]

This commit removes the nightly/release information that I added
previously to keep this focused only on using building and installing
llama.cpp with cmake and being able to quickly verify changes or
troubleshoot issues.

* ci : merge scripts into single script

* remove -dev-build_number support

This commit removes the incremental build number (versioning) support
that I added. This was incorrect and we should only use the semver for
the version. Releases will be tag a nightly build and package
maintainers/managers that build from source can use the tag and it is
therefor important that the correct version is reported. So a
nightly-build will report the semver without the build number. The build
number and commit as availble via cmake and test-cmake has been updated
to include an example of using them:
```console
$ ./build.sh
[test-cmake] version: 0.1.0, build: 10360 (08c69e381)
...
```

Refs: https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/pull/26839#discussion_r3755836969

* docs: add initial release.md documentation

* cmake : clean-up and add LLAMA_BUILD_IS_DEV option

* ci : remove version input from make-release job

* ci : add LLAMA_BUILD_IS_DEV=OFF to build-cmake-pkg.yml

Refs: https://github.com/danbev/llama.cpp/actions/runs/31576801921/job/94050639145

* docs : update release notes with LLAMA_BUILD_IS_DEV info [no ci]

* ci : add TODO to winget workflow [no ci]

---------

Co-authored-by: Georgi Gerganov <ggerganov@gmail.com>
2026-08-12 14:15:03 +02:00

6.9 KiB

llama.cpp

llama

Quick start

A few options to get llama.cpp installed on your machine:

Once installed:

# Download and run a model directly from Hugging Face
llama cli -hf ggml-org/Qwen3.5-0.8B-GGUF

# Launch OpenAI-compatible API server
llama serve -hf ggml-org/Qwen3.5-0.8B-GGUF
VLM session with `llama cli` VLM session with llama cli Built-in web UI against `llama serve` running Qwen 3.6 Built-in web UI against llama serve

Description

The main goal of llama.cpp is to enable LLM (and VLM) inference with minimal setup and state-of-the-art performance on a wide range of hardware - locally and in the cloud.

  • Plain C/C++ implementation without any dependencies
  • Apple silicon is a first-class citizen - optimized via ARM NEON, Accelerate and Metal frameworks
  • AVX, AVX2, AVX512 and AMX support for x86 architectures
  • RVV, ZVFH, ZFH, ZICBOP and ZIHINTPAUSE support for RISC-V architectures
  • 1.5-bit, 2-bit, 3-bit, 4-bit, 5-bit, 6-bit, and 8-bit integer quantization for faster inference and reduced memory use
  • Custom CUDA kernels for running LLMs on NVIDIA GPUs (support for AMD GPUs via HIP and Moore Threads GPUs via MUSA)
  • Vulkan and SYCL backend support
  • CPU+GPU hybrid inference to partially accelerate models larger than the total VRAM capacity

The llama.cpp project is build on top of the ggml library.

Supported backends

Backend Target devices
BLAS All
BLIS All
CANN Ascend NPU
CUDA Nvidia GPU
HIP AMD GPU
Hexagon [In Progress] Snapdragon
IBM zDNN IBM Z & LinuxONE
MUSA Moore Threads GPU
Metal Apple Silicon
OpenCL Adreno GPU
OpenVINO [In Progress] Intel CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs
RPC All
SYCL Intel GPU
VirtGPU VirtGPU APIR
Vulkan GPU
WebGPU All
ZenDNN AMD CPU

Documentation

Tools

Development

Contributing

  • Contributors can open PRs
  • Collaborators will be invited based on contributions
  • Maintainers can push to branches in the llama.cpp repo and merge PRs into the master branch
  • Any help with managing issues, PRs and projects is very appreciated!
  • Read the CONTRIBUTING.md for more information

Acknowledgements

  • yhirose/cpp-httplib - Single-header HTTP server, used by llama-server - MIT license
  • stb-image - Single-header image format decoder, used by multimodal subsystem - Public domain
  • nlohmann/json - Single-header JSON library, used by various tools/examples - MIT License
  • miniaudio.h - Single-header audio format decoder, used by multimodal subsystem - Public domain
  • subprocess.h - Single-header process launching solution for C and C++ - Public domain