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AI Primer

vLLM is an open-source, high-throughput and memory-efficient inference and serving engine/library for large language models. It provides fast LLM serving with features such as PagedAttention, continuous batching, OpenAI-compatible APIs, distributed inference, quantization, speculative decoding, and support for many Hugging Face model architectures including multimodal models.

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Recent stories

32 linked stories
releaseSECONDARY2026-07-30
Thinking Machines releases Inkling-Small 276B open-weight MoE

Thinking Machines released Inkling-Small, a 276B-parameter MoE with 12B active parameters, multimodal inputs, and a 1M-token context window. Providers added day-zero vLLM, SGLang, Modal, and gateway support.

releaseSECONDARY2026-07-27
Kimi K3 launches across vLLM, SGLang, Ollama, and OpenRouter

Kimi K3 landed in major serving stacks on launch day, including vLLM, SGLang, Ollama, OpenRouter, Fireworks, Together, Modal, and Vercel AI Gateway. Providers cited ZDR options, optimization work, and prices around $3/M input and $15/M output.

newsPRIMARY2026-07-25
Google, Cohere, and vLLM sign open-weight AI letter

Google, Cohere, OpenClaw, Periodic, MiniMax, and vLLM publicly backed the open-weight letter. Posts also pushed for open datasets, traces, and harnesses, while Anthropic and Amazon were noted as absent.

workflowSECONDARY2026-07-16
LocalLLaMA users report near-6x Qwen 3.6 27B speedups with MTP

A LocalLLaMA benchmark on Qwen 3.6 27B and RTX 6000 PRO reports near-6x speedups from MTP, DFlash, and n-gram drafting. Related tests cover remote prefill, NUMA offload, GPU clock tuning, and llama.cpp Gemma 4 support.

releasePRIMARY2026-07-12
vLLM v0.25.0 makes Model Runner V2 the default path for dense models

vLLM v0.25.0 made Model Runner V2 the standard dense-model execution path and removed legacy PagedAttention. The release also added parser, speculative decoding, distributed-serving, and security upgrades.

releaseSECONDARY2026-07-10
Unsloth releases Qwen3.6 NVFP4 quants with claimed 2.5x GPU speedups

Unsloth released Qwen3.6 NVFP4 quants and claimed 2.5x GPU speedups, including 27B on 24GB VRAM. Follow-up notes warned vLLM users that Marlin or default backends can make W4A4 Qwen inference 2–2.5x slower.

workflowSECONDARY2026-06-17
Codex supports open-weight models via Ollama, vLLM, and Responses-compatible endpoints

Codex workflows can now run against open-weight models served through compatible Responses API endpoints, with Ollama and vLLM publishing direct paths for GLM-5.2 and Kimi K2.7 Code. That matters because teams can keep the Codex interface while swapping to self-hosted or lower-cost inference backends.

releaseSECONDARY2026-06-10
vLLM, Unsloth, and llama.cpp add DiffusionGemma support after launch

Google's new diffusion text model picked up same-day runtime support: vLLM added native diffusion-LM serving, Unsloth shipped GGUFs, and llama.cpp got local setup guidance. That shortens the path from release to local and hosted evaluation.

releaseSECONDARY2026-06-05
Google releases Gemma 4 QAT: E2B drops to ~1GB and Ollama, SGLang, vLLM add support

Google published Gemma 4 QAT checkpoints and mobile-focused quant formats, cutting Gemma 4 E2B to roughly 1GB of memory. Ollama, SGLang, and vLLM added day-one support, making local deployment more practical on phones, laptops, and low-VRAM GPUs.

releaseSECONDARY2026-06-04
NVIDIA releases Nemotron 3 Ultra: 550B MoE, 1M context

NVIDIA shipped Nemotron 3 Ultra, a 550B/55B-active hybrid Mamba-Transformer MoE with open weights, data, and recipe, plus broad runtime and host support. It matters because the model pairs frontier open benchmarks with immediate agent-serving options, though local use still needs heavy quantization or large-memory hardware.

releaseSECONDARY2026-06-03
Gemma 4 12B ships encoder-free multimodal local model with 16GB target and 256K context

Google released Gemma 4 12B, an Apache 2.0 encoder-free multimodal model with native audio and vision for 16GB-class laptops. Day-zero support in llama.cpp, vLLM, Ollama, MLX, and SGLang should make local agents and on-device apps easier to deploy immediately.

releaseSECONDARY2026-06-01
Microsoft and NVIDIA launch RTX Spark PCs with 128GB unified memory and 1 PFLOP FP4

Microsoft and NVIDIA unveiled RTX Spark systems, including Surface Laptop Ultra and DGX-class Windows hardware, with 128GB unified memory and 1 PFLOP FP4 local AI. Day-one support from Hermes Agent, vLLM, Ollama, and Unsloth makes the launch useful for local inference and fine-tuning, not just a PC refresh.

releaseSECONDARY2026-05-30
Step 3.7 Flash opens 30-day free access for Hermes users via Nous Portal

A day after launch, Nous made Step 3.7 Flash free for 30 days to Hermes users through Nous Portal. The access window landed alongside fresh vLLM/NIM and MLX-VLM support, making the model easier to test in both local and production stacks.

releasePRIMARY2026-05-30
vLLM releases v0.22.0 with 28.9% FP8 latency cuts and KV offloading

vLLM 0.22.0 shipped DeepSeek V4 hardening, a Rust frontend, batch-invariant Cutlass FP8 paths, and multi-tier KV cache offloading. The release also removes deprecated APIs, so some serving stacks will need upgrade work.

releaseSECONDARY2026-05-05
Gemma 4 adds MTP drafters for up to 3x faster decoding

Google released Multi-Token Prediction drafters for Gemma 4 and says decoding can run up to 3x faster without output-quality loss. vLLM and SGLang support shipped day one, so local and server deployments can try the speedup immediately.

releasePRIMARY2026-05-03
vLLM 0.20.1 fixes DeepSeek V4 TopK deadlocks and tool-call errors

The vLLM team shipped more than 10 DeepSeek V4 fixes as developers kept posting V4 Pro and Flash results from coding harnesses and local servers. Use the update if serving bugs, cache behavior, or tool-call reliability are blocking cheaper long-context agent runs.

releaseSECONDARY2026-04-28
Nemotron 3 Nano Omni launches 30B-A3B multimodal model with 256K context

NVIDIA opened Nemotron 3 Nano Omni, a 30B-A3B model for text, image, audio, and video, with day-one serving support. That lets teams run one open model for perception-heavy agents instead of stitching separate components.

releaseSECONDARY2026-04-28
Poolside releases Laguna M.1 and XS.2 coding models with 225B/23B and 33B/3B MoEs

Poolside opened Laguna M.1 and Laguna XS.2 as its first public coding models, with Apache 2.0 weights and same-day provider support. That gives teams open coding models that can run locally or through standard serving stacks.

releasePRIMARY2026-04-27
vLLM 0.20.0 releases TurboQuant 2-bit KV cache, CUDA 13 baseline, and DeepSeek V4 upgrades

vLLM 0.20.0 shipped a new CUDA 13 / PyTorch 2.11 / Transformers v5 baseline, TurboQuant 2-bit KV cache, FA4 MLA defaults, and deeper DeepSeek V4 support. The release changes serving baselines across NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and ARM-CUDA setups, including 4x KV capacity and a clearer upgrade path for teams already running V4.

releaseSECONDARY2026-04-27
MiMo-V2.5 opens under MIT with 1M context and SGLang vLLM support

Xiaomi opened MiMo-V2.5 and MiMo-V2.5-Pro under MIT, adding a 1M-context multimodal agent model and a 42B-active Pro variant. SGLang and vLLM published day-one recipes, making the series immediately deployable.

newsSECONDARY2026-04-25
DeepSeek cuts V4-Pro API 75% to $0.43/$0.87 per 1M tokens through May 5

DeepSeek lowered V4-Pro API pricing and updated integration guidance for Claude Code, OpenCode, and OpenClaw a day after V4 launched. Check whether V4-Flash is the easier deploy today, while Pro stays heavier and more rate-limited.

newsSECONDARY2026-04-24
DeepSeek V4 adds day-1 support from vLLM, SGLang, Ollama, OpenCode, Venice, and Together

Within a day of launch, vLLM, SGLang, Ollama cloud, OpenCode, Venice, Together, and Baseten added support or hosted access for DeepSeek V4. That makes Flash and Pro easier to test across local, routed, and managed agent stacks.

releaseSECONDARY2026-04-23
Tencent launches Hy3 preview with 295B/21B, 256K context, and day-one OpenRouter, vLLM, and SGLang support

Tencent open-sourced Hy3 preview, a 295B MoE with 21B active parameters and 256K context, then pushed it into OpenRouter, OpenCode, OpenClaw, vLLM, and SGLang immediately. That matters because engineers can test and deploy a new reasoning-agent model on day one instead of waiting for the runtime ecosystem to catch up.

releaseSECONDARY2026-04-23
DeepSeek releases V4-Pro and V4-Flash with 1M context and $0.14/M input

DeepSeek open-sourced V4-Pro and V4-Flash under MIT, with 1M context and aggressive Flash pricing. Day-one support in SGLang, vLLM, and OpenRouter pushes open-weight agentic coding closer to closed frontier models.

releaseSECONDARY2026-04-22
Qwen3.6-27B releases with 77.2 SWE-Bench Verified and Apache 2.0

Alibaba released Qwen3.6-27B, a dense open model with multimodal input and thinking or non-thinking modes that beats Qwen3.5-397B-A17B across major coding benchmarks. Day-one support across vLLM, SGLang, Ollama, llama.cpp, GGUF, and MLX makes it ready for local and hosted coding agents.

newsSECONDARY2026-04-20
Kimi K2.6 adds day-one support across vLLM, SGLang, Ollama, and OpenRouter

Kimi K2.6 shipped across vLLM, SGLang, OpenRouter, Baseten, Ollama, OpenCode, Hermes Agent, and Droid within hours of launch. That cuts the usual lag between model release and production trials, so mixed-provider agent stacks can test it sooner.

releaseSECONDARY2026-04-16
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B releases Apache 2.0 sparse MoE with 3B active params

Alibaba open-sourced Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, a 35B multimodal sparse MoE with only 3B active parameters under Apache 2.0. Same-day support from vLLM, Ollama, SGLang, and GGUF builders makes it immediately usable for local and production coding workloads.

releaseSECONDARY2026-04-12
MiniMax M2.7 supports 128 GB GGUF runs and day-0 cloud hosting

MiniMax M2.7 moved from announcement to deployment, with GGUF guidance for 128 GB local systems and same-day availability on Together, Fireworks, Hugging Face, and ModelScope. Use the local and managed serving options now, but check the non-commercial license before adopting the 230B model.

releaseSECONDARY2026-04-11
MiniMax releases M2.7 open model with 56.22% SWE-Pro and 57.0% Terminal Bench 2

MiniMax open-sourced M2.7 and published coding and agent benchmark claims including 56.22% SWE-Pro and 57.0% Terminal Bench 2. Day-zero support from SGLang, vLLM, Ollama Cloud, Together AI, and NVIDIA NIM makes it easy to try on common serving stacks.

releaseSECONDARY2026-04-07
Z.ai releases GLM-5.1, a 744B open model with 58.4 SWE-Bench Pro and 8-hour agent runs

Z.ai released GLM-5.1, a 744B open model built for long-horizon agentic coding and ranked first among open systems on SWE-Bench Pro. Day-0 support in OpenRouter, Ollama, SGLang, vLLM, OpenCode, and local quantization paths makes it ready to test in existing stacks.

releaseSECONDARY2026-03-26
Mistral launches Voxtral TTS with 9 languages and 90 ms first audio

Mistral released open-weight Voxtral TTS with low-latency streaming, voice cloning, and cross-lingual adaptation, and vLLM Omni shipped day-0 support. Voice-agent teams should compare quality, latency, and serving cost against closed APIs.

releaseSECONDARY2026-03-26
Cohere launches Transcribe 03-2026 with 14 languages and Apache 2.0 weights

Cohere released a 2B speech-to-text model with 14 languages and top Open ASR scores, and upstreamed encoder-decoder optimizations to vLLM in the same launch. It is a self-hosted ASR option, so test accuracy and throughput on your own speech workload.

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