nvidia/Llama-3_1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1

Llama-3.1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1

Model Overview

Llama-3.1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1 is a large language model (LLM) which is a derivative of Meta Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct (AKA the reference model). It is a reasoning model that is post trained for reasoning, human chat preferences, and tasks, such as RAG and tool calling. The model supports a context length of 128K tokens. This model fits on a single 8xH100 node for inference.

Llama-3.1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1 is a model which offers a great tradeoff between model accuracy and efficiency. Efficiency (throughput) directly translates to savings. Using a novel Neural Architecture Search (NAS) approach, we greatly reduce the model’s memory footprint, enabling larger workloads, as well as reducing the number of GPUs required to run the model in a data center environment. This NAS approach enables the selection of a desired point in the accuracy-efficiency tradeoff. Furthermore, by using a novel method to vertically compress the model (see details here), it also offers a significant improvement in latency.

The model underwent a multi-phase post-training process to enhance both its reasoning and non-reasoning capabilities. This includes a supervised fine-tuning stage for Math, Code, Reasoning, Chat, and Tool Calling as well as multiple reinforcement learning (RL) stages using Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) algorithms for reasoning, chat, and instruction-following.

This model is ready for commercial use.

For more details on how the model was trained, please see this blog.

This model is part of the Llama Nemotron Collection. You can find the other model(s) in this family here:

• Llama-3.1-Nemotron-Nano-8B-v1
• Llama-3.3-Nemotron-Super-49B-v1

License/Terms of Use

GOVERNING TERMS: Your use of this model is governed by the NVIDIA Open Model License. Additional Information: Llama 3.1 Community License Agreement. Built with Llama.

Model Developer: NVIDIA

Model Dates: Trained between November 2024 and April 2025

Data Freshness: The pretraining data has a cutoff of 2023 per Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct

Use Case:

Developers designing AI Agent systems, chatbots, RAG systems, and other AI-powered applications. Also suitable for typical instruction-following tasks.

Release Date:

2025-04-07

References

• [2502.00203] Reward-aware Preference Optimization: A Unified Mathematical Framework for Model Alignment
• [2411.19146]Puzzle: Distillation-Based NAS for Inference-Optimized LLMs
• [2503.18908]FFN Fusion: Rethinking Sequential Computation in Large Language Models

Model Architecture

Architecture Type: Dense decoder-only Transformer model
Network Architecture: Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct, customized through Neural Architecture Search (NAS)

**This model was developed based on Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct
** This model has 253B model parameters.

The model is a derivative of Llama 3.1-405B-Instruct, using Neural Architecture Search (NAS). The NAS algorithm results in non-standard and non-repetitive blocks. This includes the following:

• Skip attention: In some blocks, the attention is skipped entirely, or replaced with a single linear layer.
• Variable FFN: The expansion/compression ratio in the FFN layer is different between blocks.
• FFN Fusion: When several consecutive attention layers are skipped, which can result in a sequence of multiple FFNs, that sequence of FFNs are fused into a smaller number of wider FFN layers.

For each block of the reference model, we create multiple variants providing different tradeoffs of quality vs. computational complexity, discussed in more depth below. We then search over the blocks to create a model which meets the required throughput and memory while minimizing the quality degradation. To recover performance, the model initially undergoes knowledge distillation (KD) for 65 billion tokens. This is followed by a continual pretraining (CPT) phase for 88 billion tokens.

Intended use

Llama-3.1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1 is a general purpose reasoning and chat model intended to be used in English and coding languages. Other non-English languages (German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Spanish, and Thai) are also supported.

Input

• Input Type: Text
• Input Format: String
• Input Parameters: One-Dimensional (1D)
• Other Properties Related to Input: Context length up to 131,072 tokens

Output

• Output Type: Text
• Output Format: String
• Output Parameters: One-Dimensional (1D)
• Other Properties Related to Output: Context length up to 131,072 tokens

Software Integration

• Runtime Engine: Transformers
• Recommended Hardware Microarchitecture Compatibility:
  • NVIDIA Hopper
  • NVIDIA Ampere
• Preferred Operating System(s): Linux

Model Version

1.0 (4/7/2025)

Quick Start and Usage Recommendations:

1. Reasoning mode (ON/OFF) is controlled via the system prompt, which must be set as shown in the example below. All instructions should be contained within the user prompt
2. We recommend setting temperature to `0.6`, and Top P to `0.95` for Reasoning ON mode
3. We recommend using greedy decoding (temperature 0) for Reasoning OFF mode
4. We do not recommend to add additional system prompts besides the control prompt, all instructions should be put into user query
5. We have provided a list of prompts to use for evaluation for each benchmark where a specific template is required

You can try this model out through the preview API, using this link: Llama-3_1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1.

Use It with Transformers

See the snippet below for usage with Hugging Face Transformers library. Reasoning mode (ON/OFF) is controlled via system prompt. Please see the example below

We recommend using the transformers package with version 4.48.3.
Example of reasoning on:

import torch
import transformers

model_id = "nvidia/Llama-3_1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1"
model_kwargs = {"torch_dtype": torch.bfloat16, "trust_remote_code": True, "device_map": "auto"}
tokenizer = transformers.AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
tokenizer.pad_token_id = tokenizer.eos_token_id

pipeline = transformers.pipeline(
   "text-generation",
   model=model_id,
   tokenizer=tokenizer,
   max_new_tokens=32768,
   temperature=0.6,
   top_p=0.95,
   **model_kwargs
)

thinking = "on"


print(pipeline([{"role": "system", "content": f"detailed thinking {thinking}"},{"role": "user", "content": "Solve x*(sin(x)+2)=0"}]))

Example of reasoning off:

import torch
import transformers

model_id = "nvidia/Llama-3_1-Nemotron-ULtra-253B-v1"
model_kwargs = {"torch_dtype": torch.bfloat16, "trust_remote_code": True, "device_map": "auto"}
tokenizer = transformers.AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
tokenizer.pad_token_id = tokenizer.eos_token_id

pipeline = transformers.pipeline(
   "text-generation",
   model=model_id,
   tokenizer=tokenizer,
   max_new_tokens=32768,
   do_sample=False,
   **model_kwargs
)

thinking = "off"


print(pipeline([{"role": "system", "content": f"detailed thinking {thinking}"},{"role": "user", "content": "Solve x*(sin(x)+2)=0"}]))

Use It with vLLM

pip install vllm==0.8.3

An example on how to serve with vLLM:

python3 -m vllm.entrypoints.openai.api_server \
  --model "nvidia/Llama-3_1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1" \
  --trust-remote-code \
  --seed=1 \
  --host="0.0.0.0" \
  --port=5000 \
  --served-model-name "nvidia/Llama-3_1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1" \
  --tensor-parallel-size=8 \
  --max-model-len=32768 \
  --gpu-memory-utilization 0.95 \
  --enforce-eager

Inference:

Engine:

• Transformers

Test Hardware:

• BF16:
  • 8x NVIDIA H100-80GB
  • 4x NVIDIA B100
• FP 8
  • 4x NVIDIA H100-80GB

Training and Evaluation Datasets

Training Datasets

A large variety of training data was used for the knowledge distillation phase before post-training pipeline, 3 of which included: FineWeb, Buzz-V1.2, and Dolma.

The data for the multi-stage post-training phases is a compilation of SFT and RL data that supports improvements of math, code, general reasoning, and instruction following capabilities of the original Llama instruct model.

Prompts have been sourced from either public and open corpus or synthetically generated. Responses were synthetically generated by a variety of models, with some prompts containing responses for both reasoning on and off modes, to train the model to distinguish between two modes. This model was improved with Qwen.

We have released our Llama-Nemotron-Post-Training-Dataset to promote openness and transparency in model development and improvement.

Data Collection for Training Datasets:

• Hybrid: Automated, Human, Synthetic

Data Labeling for Training Datasets:

• Hybrid: Automated, Human, Synthetic

Evaluation Datasets

We used the datasets listed in the next section to evaluate Llama-3.1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B-v1.

Data Collection for Evaluation Datasets:

• Hybrid: Human/Synthetic

Data Labeling for Evaluation Datasets:

• Hybrid: Human/Synthetic/Automatic

Evaluation Results

These results contain both Reasoning On, and Reasoning Off. We recommend using temperature=`0.6`, top_p=`0.95` for Reasoning On mode, and greedy decoding for Reasoning Off mode. All evaluations are done with 32k sequence length. We run the benchmarks up to 16 times and average the scores to be more accurate.

NOTE: Where applicable, a Prompt Template will be provided. While completing benchmarks, please ensure that you are parsing for the correct output format as per the provided prompt in order to reproduce the benchmarks seen below.

GPQA

Reasoning Mode	pass@1
Reasoning Off	56.60
Reasoning On	76.01

User Prompt Template:

"What is the correct answer to this question: {question}\nChoices:\nA. {option_A}\nB. {option_B}\nC. {option_C}\nD. {option_D}\nLet's think step by step, and put the final answer (should be a single letter A, B, C, or D) into a \boxed{}"

AIME25

Reasoning Mode	pass@1
Reasoning Off	16.67
Reasoning On	72.50

User Prompt Template:

"Below is a math question. I want you to reason through the steps and then give a final answer. Your final answer should be in \boxed{}.\nQuestion: {question}"

BFCL V2 Live

Reasoning Mode	Score
Reasoning Off	73.62
Reasoning On	74.10

User Prompt Template:

You are an expert in composing functions. You are given a question and a set of possible functions. 
Based on the question, you will need to make one or more function/tool calls to achieve the purpose. 
If none of the function can be used, point it out. If the given question lacks the parameters required by the function,
also point it out. You should only return the function call in tools call sections.

If you decide to invoke any of the function(s), you MUST put it in the format of <TOOLCALL>[func_name1(params_name1=params_value1, params_name2=params_value2...), func_name2(params)]</TOOLCALL>

You SHOULD NOT include any other text in the response.
Here is a list of functions in JSON format that you can invoke.

<AVAILABLE_TOOLS>{functions}</AVAILABLE_TOOLS>

{user_prompt}

LiveCodeBench (20240801-20250201)

Reasoning Mode	pass@1
Reasoning Off	29.03
Reasoning On	66.31

User Prompt Template (without starter code):

"You will be given a question (problem specification) and will generate a correct Python program that matches the specification and passes all tests.

Question: {prompt}

Read the inputs from stdin solve the problem and write the answer to stdout (do not directly test on the sample inputs). Enclose your code within delimiters as follows. Ensure that when the python program runs, it reads the inputs, runs the algorithm and writes output to STDOUT.
```python
# YOUR CODE HERE
```

User Prompt Template (with starter code):

You will be given a question (problem specification) and will generate a correct Python program that matches the specification and passes all tests.

Question: {prompt}

You will use the following starter code to write the solution to the problem and enclose your code within delimiters.
```python
{starter_code}
```

IFEval

Reasoning Mode	Strict:Instruction
Reasoning Off	88.85
Reasoning On	89.45

MATH500

Reasoning Mode	pass@1
Reasoning Off	80.40
Reasoning On	97.00

User Prompt Template:

"Below is a math question. I want you to reason through the steps and then give a final answer. Your final answer should be in \boxed{}.\nQuestion: {question}"

Ethical Considerations:

NVIDIA believes Trustworthy AI is a shared responsibility and we have established policies and practices to enable development for a wide array of AI applications. When downloaded or used in accordance with our terms of service, developers should work with their internal model team to ensure this model meets requirements for the relevant industry and use case and addresses unforeseen product misuse.

For more detailed information on ethical considerations for this model, please see the Model Card++ Explainability, Bias, Safety & Security, and Privacy Subcards.

Please report security vulnerabilities or NVIDIA AI Concerns here.