Guides
Plain-language guides to AI hardware concepts: precision formats, quantization, sparsity, FLOPS and how to read a GPU spec sheet.
Practical guides for choosing and using AI hardware
Guides for people choosing, buying or using AI hardware: which GPU runs which model, how much memory you need, what training costs, and how to read the performance numbers vendors publish.
Running models at home? Start with the first three. Planning training or comparing chips? Jump to the cost and TOPS guides.
Start here
Tools for this topic
Edited by Sami Ullah Khan. Read our editorial policy.
All Guides articles
Mixed Precision Training Explained: FP16, BF16 and FP8 on Tensor Cores
How mixed precision training works, why it makes training up to several times faster on tensor cores, the difference between FP16 with loss scaling…
How to Run an LLM Locally: Ollama, LM Studio and llama.cpp (Step by Step)
A beginner-friendly guide to running large language models on your own computer with Ollama, LM Studio or llama.cpp: hardware you need, which model to…
How Much VRAM Do I Need to Run an LLM? Formula, Table and Examples
A simple formula to work out how much VRAM a large language model needs: weights, KV cache and overhead. Includes a table for 8B…
GPU Memory Bandwidth Explained: Why It Decides LLM Speed
What GPU memory bandwidth is, how to calculate it from bus width and memory speed, why it limits how fast large language models generate…
What Is VRAM? Video Memory Explained for Gaming and AI (2026)
VRAM is the memory soldered onto a graphics card. What it does, how it differs from system RAM, GDDR7 vs HBM, how to check…
What Is an AI Data Center? How AI Factories Work, Explained (2026)
An AI data center is a facility built to train and run AI models on thousands of GPUs. How it differs from a normal…
What Is a GPU Cluster? How AI Training Clusters Work (2026)
A GPU cluster links many GPU servers with a fast network so they can work on one job. How clusters are built, how NVLink…
What Are CUDA Cores? How Many You Need and What They Do (2026)
CUDA cores are the small arithmetic units inside NVIDIA GPUs. What one actually is, how they are grouped into SMs and warps, how core…
What Is Superintelligence? How SI Could Be Built and What It Could Do
Superintelligence (SI) is AI that far exceeds the best humans in almost every field. It does not exist yet. This guide covers how it…
How AI Works: A Complete Guide From Beginner to Master
A six-level learning path: what AI is, how models learn, how chatbots generate answers, why AI is accurate and why it still makes mistakes,…