BitNet

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# bitnet.cpp

[![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-blue.svg)](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
![version](https://img.shields.io/badge/version-1.0-blue)
[![Hugging Face](https://img.shields.io/badge/HuggingFace-Collection-orange?logo=huggingface)](https://huggingface.co/collections/microsoft/bitnet)
[![Technical Report](https://img.shields.io/badge/Technical-Report-red?logo=arxiv)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.11880)
[![Demo](https://img.shields.io/badge/Online-Demo-green?logo=microsoft)](https://demo-bitnet-h0h8hcfqeqhrf5gf.canadacentral-01.azurewebsites.net/)
[![GPU Kernel](https://img.shields.io/badge/GPU-Kernel-6F42C1?logo=github)](https://github.com/microsoft/BitNet/blob/main/gpu/README.md)

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<h3>📰 News</h3>

<strong>07/23/2026:</strong> 📣 We released <a href="https://github.com/microsoft/VibeASR.cpp"><strong>VibeASR.cpp</strong></a> — a real-time multilingual ASR inference engine on CPU using BitNet I2_S quantization, achieving RTF < 1 with very few threads on x86 (AVX2) and ARM (NEON) platforms. [<a href="https://github.com/microsoft/VibeASR.cpp">Code</a>] [<a href="https://huggingface.co/microsoft/VibeVoice-ASR-BitNet">Models</a>] [<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.21075">Report</a>] ![NEW](https://img.shields.io/badge/NEW-red)

<strong>07/20/2026:</strong> 📣 We released <a href="https://huggingface.co/microsoft/BitNet-embedding-0.6B"><strong>BitNet-embedding-0.6B</strong></a> and <a href="https://huggingface.co/microsoft/BitNet-embedding-270M"><strong>BitNet-embedding-270M</strong></a> on Hugging Face — the first 1-bit embedding models that deliver competitive embedding quality with significantly faster inference on CPUs.
- **1.42x to 2.28x speedup** over F16 on BitNet-embedding-0.6B prefill (8 threads)
- **1.32x to 1.74x speedup** over F16 on BitNet-embedding-270M prefill (8 threads)
- Supports I2_S conversion with optimized kernels on x86 CPUs
- Lossless inference with 2 bits per weight

07/16/2026: 📣 Released [BitNet Embeddings 0.6B/270M: I2_S Conversion and Inference Optimization](docs/bitnet-embeddings-i2s-guide.md) — detailed guide for converting and running BitNet embedding models with optimized I2_S kernels.

01/15/2026: 📣 Released [BitNet CPU Inference Optimization](https://github.com/microsoft/BitNet/blob/main/src/README.md) — parallel kernel implementations with configurable tiling and embedding quantization support, achieving **1.15x to 2.1x** additional speedup over the original implementation.

05/20/2025: 📣 Released [BitNet Official GPU inference kernel](https://github.com/microsoft/BitNet/blob/main/gpu/README.md) — extending 1-bit inference beyond CPUs.

04/14/2025: 📣 Released [BitNet Official 2B Parameter Model](https://huggingface.co/microsoft/BitNet-b1.58-2B-4T) on Hugging Face — the first official BitNet b1.58 model trained with 4T tokens.

02/18/2025: 📑 [Bitnet.cpp: Efficient Edge Inference for Ternary LLMs](https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.11880) —