Here's a fun way to start interacting with it (this loads and runs Llama 3.2 3B in a terminal chat UI):
uv run --isolated --with mlx-lm python -m mlx_lm.chatmlx is similar to numpy/pytorch, but only for Apple Silicon.
mlx-lm is a llama.cpp equivalent, but built on top of mlx.
This is typical of what happens any time I try to run something written in Python. It may be easier than setting up an NVIDIA GPU, but that's a low bar.
(Sorry I’ll excuse myself now…
Python is awesome in many ways, one of my favourite languages, but unless you are happy with venv manipulation (or live in Conda), it's often a nightmare that ends up worse than DLL-hell.
Python is by no means alone in this or particularly egregious. Having been a heavy Perl developer in the 2000s, I was part of the problem. I didn't understand why other people had so much trouble doing things that seemed simple to me, because I was eating, breathing, and sleeping Perl. I knew how to prolong the intervals between breaking my installation, and how to troubleshoot and repair it, but there was no reason why anyone who wanted to deploy, or even develop on, my code base should have needed that encyclopedic knowledge.
This is why, for all their faults, I count containers as the biggest revolution in the software industry, at least for us "backend" folks.
MLX looks really nice from the demo-level playing around with it I've done, but I usually stick to jax so, you know, I can actually deploy it on a server without trying to find someone who racks macs.
What's your tokens/sec rate (and on which device)?
I don't have a token/second figure to hand but it's fast enough that I'm not frustrated by it.
For 4 bit deepseek-r1-distill-llama-70b on a Macbook Pro M4 Max with the MLX version on LM Studio: 10.2 tok/sec on power and 4.2 tok/sec on battery / low power
For 4 bit gemma-3-27b-it-qat I get: 26.37 tok/sec on power and on battery low power 9.7
It'd be nice to know all the possible power tweaks to get the value higher and get additional insight on how llm's work and interact with the cpu and memory.
What have you used those models for, and how would you rate them in those tasks?
Which benchmarks are you working off of, exactly? Unless your memory is bottlenecked, neither raster or compute workloads on M4 are more energy efficient than Nvidia's 50-series silicon: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks
Apple M3 Ultra - 131247 - 200W [1]
Looks like it might be 2.8x faster in the benchmark, but ends up using 3.25x more power at a minimum.
[1] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/103891/apples-new-m3-ultra-ru...
If you're optimizing for lower power draw + higher throughput on Mac (especially in MLX), definitely keep an eye on the Desloth LLMs that are starting to appear.
Desloth models are basically aggressively distilled and QAT-optimized versions of larger instruction models (think: 7B → 1.3B or 2B) designed specifically for high tokens/sec at minimal VRAM. They're tiny but surprisingly capable for structured outputs, fast completions, and lightweight agent pipelines.
I'm seeing Desloth-tier models consistently hit >50 tok/sec on M1/M2 hardware without needing active cooling ramps, especially when combined with low-bit quant like Q4_K_M or Q5_0.
If you care about runtime efficiency per watt + low-latency inference (vs. maximum capability), these newer Desloth styled architectures are going to be a serious unlock.
Any other resources like that you could share?
Also, what kind of models do you run with mlx and what do you use them for?
Lately I’ve been pretty happy with gemma3:12b for a wide range of things (generating stories, some light coding, image recognition). Sometimes I’ve been surprised by qwen2.5-coder:32b. And I’m really impressed by the speed and versatility, at such tiny size, of qwen2.5:0.5b (playing with fine tuning it to see if I can get it to generate some decent conversations roleplaying as a character)
I mainly use MLX for LLMs (with https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx-lm and my own https://github.com/simonw/llm-mlx which wraps that), vision LLMs (via https://github.com/Blaizzy/mlx-vlm) and running Whisper (https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx-examples/tree/main/whisper)
I haven't tried mlx-audio yet (which can synthesize speech) but it looks interesting too: https://github.com/Blaizzy/mlx-audio
The two best people to follow for MLX stuff are Apple's Awni Hannun - https://twitter.com/awnihannun and https://github.com/awni - and community member Prince Canuma who's responsible for both mlx-vlm and mlx-audio: https://twitter.com/Prince_Canuma and https://github.com/Blaizzy
Very cool to hear your perspective in how you are using the small LLMs! I’ve been experimenting extensively with local LLM stacks on:
• M1 Max (MLX native)
• LM Studio (GLM, MLX, GGUFs)
• Llama.cp (GGUFs)
• n8n for orchestration + automation (multi-stage LLM workflows)
My emerging use cases: -Rapid narration scripting -Roleplay agents with embedded prompt personas -Reviewing image/video attachments + structuring copy for clarity -Local RAG and eval pipelines
My current lineup of small LLMs (this changes every month depending on what is updated):
MLX-native models (mlx-community):
-Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct-bf16 → excellent VQA and instruction following
-InternVL3-8B-3bit → fast, memory-light, solid for doc summarization
-GLM-Z1-9B-bf16 → reliable multilingual output + inference density
GGUF via LM Studio / llama.cpp:
-Gemma-3-12B-it-qat → well-aligned, solid for RP dialogue
-Qwen2.5-0.5B-MLX-4bit → blazing fast; chaining 2+ agents at once
-GLM-4-32B-0414-8bit (Cobra4687) → great for iterative copy drafts
Emerging / niche models tested:
MedFound-7B-GGUF → early tests for narrative medicine tasks
X-Ray_Alpha-mlx-8Bit → experimental story/dialogue hybrid
llama-3.2-3B-storyteller-Q4_K_M → small, quick, capable of structured hooks
PersonalityParty_saiga_fp32-i1 → RP grounding experiments (still rough)
I test most new LLMs on release. QAT models in particular are showing promise, balancing speed + fidelity for chained inference. The meta-trend: models are getting better, smaller, faster, especially for edge workflows.
Happy to swap notes if others are mixing MLX, GGUF, and RAG in low-latency pipelines.
pj_mukh•9mo ago
But as a measure for what you can achieve with a course like this: does anyone know what the max tok/s vs iPhone model plot look like, and how does MLX change that plot?