karpathy/llama2.c

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

20028 stars · 2617 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

A minimal, dependency-free implementation of the Llama 2 LLM architecture that trains in PyTorch and runs inference in a single ~700-line pure C file. It can also load Meta's Llama 2 checkpoints (fp32), though it is intended for small models and educational use.

Use cases

• run a llama 2 model in pure c
• learn how transformer llm inference works internally
• train a tiny llama 2 model and generate text from it
• embed a small language model in a c program with no dependencies
• study a minimal alternative to llama.cpp
• generate stories with a small language model on a laptop

When to choose

• you want to read and understand every line of an LLM inference engine
• you need to run very small (up to ~7B fp32, practically much smaller) Llama 2 models with zero dependencies
• you are teaching or learning how LLMs work end to end, from training to inference

When to avoid

• you need production-grade performance, quantization, or broad model support - use llama.cpp instead
• you want to serve large models or use GPU acceleration
• you need a maintained, feature-rich inference stack rather than an educational project

Facets

library · maturity active

llm-inference machine-learning deep-learning llm-training large-language-models deep-learning artificial-intelligence education c cross-platform cli llama-2 minimalist educational single-file tinystories transformer-inference

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