About
geisten is an open lab for efficient AI. We want to find out how much a language model can do on cheap and edge hardware: an ordinary CPU, a few gigabytes of memory, no cloud. We are based in Kaarst near Düsseldorf.
Founder
From noisy measurements to small computers. geisten was founded by Dr. Germar Schlegel. His PhD in experimental physical chemistry dealt with ill-posed inverse problems: getting the most reliable information out of noisy measurements. The question today is a different one, the habit is the same: measure carefully, and get the most out of limited means.
He brings more than 20 years of software and C engineering and several years of embedded and audio processing. He writes geistlib and geistr.
How we work
Measure first. Every speed figure we publish names the hardware, the model file, the versions on both sides and the method. A nightly benchmark compares geistlib with llama.cpp on several machines.
Publish what goes against us. Where geistlib is slower, the numbers stay on the page. Failed ideas are results too.
Work in the open. Code, raw data and open problems are public. We would rather learn from people who try it on their own devices than polish it alone.
Open source
geistlib is the engine: an inference library in C for CPUs and little memory, with ternary kernels and no runtime dependencies. geistr is the client on top: one small program that picks a model that fits your machine, runs it and continues your last conversation.
Questions, ideas, numbers from your hardware, or a project of your own: we are glad to hear from you. If your company wants to run small models on its own devices, we also help with that.
g.schlegel@geisten.net