Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct
Qwen · instruct checkpoint
Describes the Instruct checkpoint; the card gives the pretraining token count of the shared base.
Open in the comparison table Hugging Face ↗ Blog ↗
KV calculations use one sequence at 131,072 tokens and 16-bit cache elements. They include bounded sliding-window caches. This is retained cache payload, not peak prefill memory. The comparison table also offers sourced mixed-precision layouts, including quantization scales.
Release
- Released
2025-09-11
Source: model-card · QwenLM GitHub README; News
2025-09-11: We release Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B
Date the weights (or, if earlier, the technical report) were first made public, YYYY-MM-DD, as dated by the publisher. A Hugging Face repository creation date is used only when no dated publisher page exists, with a note.
- License
apache-2.0
Source: model-card · README.md; YAML front matter
license: apache-2.0
License of the released weights as declared by the publisher (model card metadata or license file), e.g. apache-2.0, mit, or the name of a custom license.
- Input modalities
text
Inferred from the source; see the explanation below.
Source: model-card · README.md; YAML front matter
pipeline_tag: text-generation
Text-generation pipeline tag; Qwen3NextForCausalLM config has no vision components.
Input modalities of the released checkpoint as the publisher states them, from: text, image, video, audio, joined with ' + ' in that order ("text", "text + image + video").
Parameters
- Total params
80B parameters
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview
80B in total and 3B activated
Total parameter count as reported by the publisher. See params.note for whether embeddings, MTP heads or vision towers are included.
- Active params
3B parameters
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview
80B in total and 3B activated
Parameters used per token in the forward pass, as reported by the publisher.
- Active non-embedding (stated)
Not disclosed
Active parameters excluding the input embedding and the output head (unembedding). Stated by the publisher, or computed from params.active by subtracting vocab × d_model for each of the embedding and output head that params.active is stated to include (basis inferred, note with the arithmetic). Not disclosed when the scope of params.active is not stated.
- Counted total params
79.67B parameters
Calculated: embedding + output head + all experts + other weights, Qwen/Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct@9c7f2fb safetensors headers; reproduces stated total (backbone) and active (non-embedding)
Parameters of the text backbone counted from the released checkpoint's safetensors headers (embedding, output head, all experts and other weights; excluding MTP modules, vision/audio towers and n-gram lookup tables). Shown only when the counts reproduce the publisher's stated total and active parameters within 5% under some scope.
- Counted embedding + head
622.3M parameters
Calculated: input embedding + output head, Qwen/Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct@9c7f2fb safetensors headers
Input embedding plus output head (once if tied), counted from the checkpoint.
- Non-emb. params (counted)
79.05B parameters
Calculated: dense + routed backbone weights; excludes input embedding, output head, lookup tables, MTP and other modalities, Qwen/Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct@9c7f2fb safetensors headers; reproduces stated total (backbone) and active (non-embedding)
Language backbone weights excluding input embeddings, output head, lookup/Engram tables, MTP modules and vision/audio towers. Equals params.counted_total minus params.counted_embedding. Same validation as params.counted_total.
- Largest layer (counted)
1.649B parameters
Calculated: max(sum of dense and routed weights sharing a full layers.<index> tensor path), all experts included, Qwen/Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct@9c7f2fb safetensors headers
Largest group of language-backbone weights sharing a full layers.<index> tensor path, including every routed expert. Excludes lookup/Engram tables, embeddings, output head, MTP and other modalities. Hybrid checkpoints may store mixers and FFNs as separate layers. All-gather volume also depends on wrapping, sharding and dtype.
- Active non-emb. (counted)
3.253B parameters
Calculated: non-expert weights + routed experts × 10/512, excluding embedding and output head, Qwen/Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct@9c7f2fb safetensors headers; reproduces stated total (backbone) and active (non-embedding)
Active parameters per token excluding the input embedding and output head, counted from the checkpoint as all non-expert weights plus routed-expert weights × top_k / experts. Same validation as params.counted_total.
- Counting scope
Rounded card figures. Whether the MTP module is counted is not stated.
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview
Number of Paramaters (Non-Embedding): 79B
What the publisher's counts include or exclude (MTP modules, embeddings, vision encoder, n-gram tables).
- Non-embedding params
79B parameters
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview
Number of Paramaters (Non-Embedding): 79B
Parameters excluding embedding and output head, as reported.
Shape
- Layers
48
Source: config · /num_hidden_layers
Number of transformer blocks in the main backbone (attention or token mixer plus FFN), excluding MTP modules.
- d_model
2,048
Source: config · /hidden_size
Residual stream width.
- Vocab
151,936
Source: config · /vocab_size
Embedding table rows (vocab_size in config, may include padding).
- Tied embeddings
No
Source: config · /tie_word_embeddings
Input embedding and output head share weights.
- d_model / layers
42.6667
Calculated: d_model / layers
Width-to-depth ratio, d_model divided by the number of blocks.
Attention
- Token mixers
Gated DeltaNet, GQA
Source: model-card · README.md; Highlights
Replaces standard attention with the combination of Gated DeltaNet and Gated Attention
Gated Attention is GQA with 16 Q / 2 KV heads.
Token-mixing layer types in the backbone, e.g. GQA, MLA, SWA, Gated DeltaNet, Mamba-2, DSA (DeepSeek sparse attention).
- Layer layout
3 Gated DeltaNet : 1 GQA
Inferred from the source; see the explanation below.
Source: code · configuration_qwen3_next.py; Qwen3NextConfig.__post_init__, lines 132–137
"linear_attention" if bool((i + 1) % interval_pattern) else "full_attention"
Config full_attention_interval 4; layer_types is derived from it in configuration_qwen3_next.py. The pinned config omits layer_types and full_attention_interval; Qwen3NextConfig defaults the interval to 4.
Token-mixer order, summarized as a pattern or layer positions. The fact's optional sequence lists each mixer in order; a ratio alone does not establish the order. Auxiliary prediction modules and standalone FFNs are excluded.
- Global-attention layers
12
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview; Hybrid Layout
12 \* (3 \* (Gated DeltaNet -> MoE) -> 1 \* (Gated Attention -> MoE))
Layers whose KV cache grows with full context (dense or sparse global attention, MLA). Excludes sliding-window and linear/recurrent layers.
- Linear : global
3
Calculated: attn.linear_layers / attn.global_layers
attn.linear_layers divided by attn.global_layers (3 for '3 Gated DeltaNet : 1 GQA').
- Linear / SSM layers
36
Inferred from the source; see the explanation below.
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview; Hybrid Layout
12 \* (3 \* (Gated DeltaNet -> MoE) -> 1 \* (Gated Attention -> MoE))
12 repeats × 3 Gated DeltaNet layers.
Layers with a fixed-size recurrent state (linear attention, DeltaNet variants, Mamba).
- Query heads
16
Source: config · /num_attention_heads
Query heads in the global-attention layers.
- KV heads
2
Source: config · /num_key_value_heads
Key/value heads in the global-attention layers. Not applicable to MLA, whose cache is a shared latent.
- Heads × head dim
4,096
Calculated: heads × head_dim
attn.heads × attn.head_dim, the query projection width of global layers.
- Q heads / KV head
8
Calculated: heads / kv_heads
attn.heads divided by attn.kv_heads in global layers.
- QK head dim
256
Source: config · /head_dim
Query/key dimension per head in global-attention layers (for MLA, nope + rope dims).
- Positional encoding
partial RoPE
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview; Gated Attention
Rotary Position Embedding Dimension: 64
64 of 256 head dims rotated.
Positional scheme in global layers: RoPE, partial RoPE, NoPE, or mixed per layer type.
- RoPE base
10,000,000
Source: config · /rope_theta
RoPE base frequency of the global layers at release.
- Rotary fraction
0.25
Source: config · /partial_rotary_factor
Fraction of each head's QK dimensions that are rotated.
- QK norm
Yes
Source: code · modeling_qwen3_next.py; Qwen3NextAttention.__init__
self.q_norm = Qwen3NextRMSNorm(self.head_dim, eps=config.rms_norm_eps)
Per-head RMSNorm on Q and K in the full-attention layers.
Queries and keys are normalized per head before the dot product.
- Output gate
sigmoid, elementwise on the attention output before o_proj; gate projected jointly with Q
Source: code · modeling_qwen3_next.py; Qwen3NextAttention.forward
attn_output = attn_output * torch.sigmoid(gate)
Gate applied to the attention output before the output projection, with its placement.
- QKV bias
No
Source: code · configuration_qwen3_next.py; Qwen3NextConfig defaults
attention_bias: bool = False
config.json does not set attention_bias; the class default applies to q/k/v/o projections.
Query/key/value projections have bias terms.
- Linear-mixer details
Gated DeltaNet: 16 QK heads, 32 V heads, head dim 128, short conv 4, SiLU-gated RMSNorm on output
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview; Gated DeltaNet
Number of Linear Attention Heads: 32 for V and 16 for QK
QK heads/dim from config linear_num_key_heads and linear_key_head_dim; conv kernel from linear_conv_kernel_dim; SiLU output gate from Qwen3NextRMSNormGated in modeling_qwen3_next.py.
Configuration of the linear / SSM layers (e.g. Gated DeltaNet heads and dims, Mamba-2 state size), as one string.
- Linear-mixer heads
32
Source: config · /linear_num_value_heads
Value heads (or SSM heads) in the linear / SSM layers.
- Linear-mixer head dim
128
Source: config · /linear_value_head_dim
Head dimension of the linear / SSM layers (value head dim for DeltaNet variants, head_dim for Mamba-2).
- Short conv kernel
4
Source: config · /linear_conv_kernel_dim
Kernel size of the causal short convolution in linear / SSM layers or attention projections.
Feed-forward
- Activation
SwiGLU
Source: code · modeling_qwen3_next.py; Qwen3NextExperts.forward
current_hidden_states = self.act_fn(gate) * up
act_fn is SiLU (config hidden_act silu).
FFN activation (SwiGLU, GeGLU, ...).
- FFN bias
No
Source: code · modeling_qwen3_next.py; Qwen3NextMLP.__init__
self.gate_proj = nn.Linear(self.hidden_size, self.intermediate_size, bias=False)
Shared-expert MLP; routed experts are bias-free weight tensors.
FFN projections have bias terms.
Mixture of experts
- Routed experts
512
Source: config · /num_experts
Routed experts per MoE layer.
- Experts per token
10
Source: config · /num_experts_per_tok
Routed experts selected per token.
- Expert dim
512
Source: config · /moe_intermediate_size
Intermediate width of one routed expert.
- Leading dense layers
0
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview; Hybrid Layout
12 \* (3 \* (Gated DeltaNet -> MoE) -> 1 \* (Gated Attention -> MoE))
Config decoder_sparse_step 1 and empty mlp_only_layers: every layer is MoE.
Number of initial blocks that use a dense FFN instead of MoE.
- Router score
softmax
Source: code · modeling_qwen3_next.py; Qwen3NextTopKRouter.forward
router_probs = torch.nn.functional.softmax(router_logits, dtype=torch.float, dim=-1)
Top-k taken after softmax; shared expert has its own sigmoid gate.
Gating function over expert logits (softmax, sigmoid).
- Load balancing
global-batch load-balancing loss
Source: blog · Qwen3-Next blog; Key Features; Ultra-Sparse MoE
Experiments show that, with global load balancing
Cites 'Demons in the Detail' (global-batch balancing); coefficient not stated.
Load-balancing method, with coefficients where disclosed.
- Renormalize top-k
Yes
Source: config · /norm_topk_prob
Selected expert weights are renormalized to sum to 1.
- Expert dim / d_model
0.25
Calculated: moe.expert_dim / d_model
moe.expert_dim divided by shape.d_model.
- Sparsity (experts / top-k)
51.2
Calculated: experts / top_k
Routed experts divided by experts selected per token.
- Active / total
0.0375
Calculated: params.active / params.total
params.active divided by params.total.
Multi-token prediction
- MTP depth
Not disclosed
Additional future tokens predicted during pretraining (0 when the model was trained without MTP).
- MTP module
one decoder layer (gated attention + MoE); RMSNormed hidden state and RMSNormed next-token embedding fused by linear fc; final RMSNorm
Source: config · model.safetensors.index.json; weight_map mtp.* entries
mtp.pre_fc_norm_embedding.weight
From weight names: pre_fc_norm_hidden, pre_fc_norm_embedding, fc, layers.0 (self_attn with q_norm/k_norm, MoE mlp), norm; no mtp.layers.1. Card: MTP trained with multi-step training.
Contents of one MTP module (mixer and FFN type, norms, how the previous hidden state and next-token embedding are combined).
- MTP FFN
MoE
Source: config · model.safetensors.index.json; weight_map mtp.layers.0.mlp
mtp.layers.0.mlp.shared_expert_gate.weight
FFN in the MTP module: 'dense' or 'MoE', with its width when it differs from the backbone.
- MTP loss weight
Not disclosed
Weight of the MTP loss, including its schedule.
- MTP weights released
Yes
Source: config · model.safetensors.index.json; weight_map mtp.* entries
mtp.fc.weight
The released checkpoint contains the MTP module weights.
Normalization and stability
- Norm
RMSNorm (1+w gain)
Source: model-card · README.md; Highlights; Stability Optimizations
zero-centered and weight-decayed layernorm
Card: zero-centered gains with weight decay; code applies 1 + weight.
Normalization layer type in the blocks.
- Norm placement
pre
Source: code · modeling_qwen3_next.py; Qwen3NextDecoderLayer.forward
hidden_states = self.input_layernorm(hidden_states)
Pre-norm, post-norm, or sandwich (pre and post).
- Norm epsilon
1e-06
Source: config · /rms_norm_eps
Epsilon of the block normalization layers.
Context length
- Pretraining context
Not disclosed
Sequence length of the main pretraining stage.
- Trained context
Not disclosed
Longest sequence length trained on after context extension.
- Advertised context
1.01M tokens
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview
262,144 natively and extensible up to 1,010,000 tokens
262,144 native (config max_position_embeddings); beyond that via inference-time YaRN, factor 4.
Longest context the publisher says the model supports, possibly beyond trained length via RoPE scaling.
Pretraining recipe
- Pretraining tokens
15T tokens
Source: model-card · README.md; Model Overview
Pretraining (15T tokens)
Tokens seen in pretraining including annealing and context extension, as reported.
- Optimizer
Not disclosed
Optimizer used for the bulk of parameters.
- Peak LR
Not disclosed
Peak learning rate of the main pretraining stage.
- Final LR
Not disclosed
Learning rate at the end of the decay.
- LR schedule
Not disclosed
Learning-rate schedule shape with phase boundaries.
- Warmup
Not disclosed
Warmup length in steps or tokens.
- Batch size
Not disclosed
Global batch size, including any batch-size ramp: sequences × sequence length (token total), or the token total alone when only that is stated.
- Weight decay
Not disclosed
Decoupled weight decay coefficient.
- Adam betas
Not disclosed
(beta1, beta2) of the Adam-family optimizer or its AdamW fallback.
- Grad clip
Not disclosed
Global gradient-norm clipping threshold.
- Training precision
Not disclosed
Matmul precision of pretraining (BF16, FP8 recipe, NVFP4 recipe) with the scaling granularity where disclosed. Never inferred from the released checkpoint dtype.
- Initialization
MoE router parameters normalized at initialization
Source: blog · Qwen3-Next blog; Key Features; Training-Stability-Friendly Designs
We also normalize MoE router parameters during initialization
Weight initialization (std or scheme) as stated by the publisher; config initializer_range alone is not evidence.
- Stability measures
zero-centered, weight-decayed norm gains
Source: model-card · README.md; Highlights; Stability Optimizations
zero-centered and weight-decayed layernorm
Card also cites unspecified other stabilizing enhancements.
Interventions used during pretraining to keep it stable (QK-clip, z-loss, logit caps, spike handling), with coefficients.
- Data mix
uniformly sampled 15T-token subset of the Qwen3 36T-token corpus
Source: blog · Qwen3-Next blog; Pre-training
Qwen3-Next is trained on a uniformly sampled subset (15T tokens) of Qwen3
Pretraining data composition as disclosed (domain shares, synthetic fraction, repetition).
- Compute
<80% of Qwen3-30B-A3B GPU hours; 9.3% of Qwen3-32B compute cost
Source: blog · Qwen3-Next blog; Pre-training
It uses less than 80% of the GPU hours needed by Qwen3-30A-3B, and only 9.3% of the compute cost of Qwen3-32B
Pretraining compute as stated (GPU-hours or FLOPs).
Scaling & HP transfer
- Tokens / param
187.5
Calculated: train.tokens / params.total
train.tokens divided by params.total.
- Tokens / active param (non-embedding)
4,611.7
Calculated: train.tokens / params.counted_active_non_embedding
train.tokens divided by params.counted_active_non_embedding, or by the stated params.active_non_embedding when there is no validated checkpoint count.
KV cache
- KV bytes / token
24,576 bytes
Calculated: kv.bytes_at_context / 131072 tokens; uniform BF16, payload only; quantization overhead excluded. Global KV: 12 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry
Retained KV cache divided by context length, including bounded SWA caches and indexer keys. Exports use uniform BF16 at 131,072 tokens. The website can select uniform payload precision (no quantization overhead) or sourced component formats (including scales and documented padding). This is cache payload, not peak prefill memory or persistent prefix storage.
- Global KV bytes / token
24,576 bytes
Calculated: 24576 B / 1 tokens (Global KV); uniform BF16, payload only; quantization overhead excluded. Global KV: 12 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry
Long-context global KV bytes per token, including indexer keys; excludes bounded SWA caches. Compression rates and cross-layer cache reuse are included. Exports use uniform BF16; the website's storage selector also applies here. This is the field to compare with global-KV figures in reports, using the matching storage recipe.
- KV bytes / token / B active
8,192 bytes
Calculated: kv.bytes_per_token (131072 tokens) / (params.active / 1e9); uniform BF16, payload only; quantization overhead excluded. Global KV: 12 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry
kv.bytes_per_token divided by active parameters in billions (131,072 tokens in exports).
- KV at context / B active
1,073,741,824 bytes
Calculated: kv.bytes_at_context (131072 tokens) / (params.active / 1e9); uniform BF16, payload only; quantization overhead excluded. Global KV: 12 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry
kv.bytes_at_context divided by active parameters in billions (131,072 tokens in exports).
- KV at context
3,221,225,472 bytes
Calculated: 24576 B × 131072 (Global KV); uniform BF16, payload only; quantization overhead excluded. Global KV: 12 × (1024 × 16/8) B/entry
Retained KV cache for one sequence at the selected context, including SWA windows and indexer keys. Exports use uniform BF16 at 131,072 tokens. Excludes recurrent state, compressor tail state, draft/MTP caches, temporary prefill tensors, allocator metadata and persistent prefix snapshots. Does not estimate peak prefill or total serving memory.
Evaluations
- AA Intelligence Index
10
Source: leaderboard · Artificial Analysis model page /models/qwen3-next-80b-a3b-instruct, Wayback snapshot 2026-10-19
Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct scores 10 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Variant: Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct. Index v4.3.2.
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3.2 of the post-trained model, from a dated Wayback snapshot of its Artificial Analysis page. The note names the variant (reasoning setting).