Underdog Saluki 27B 1.0 + MTP (GGUF)
Underdog Saluki 27B 1.0 with the
Qwen3.8-27B multi-token-prediction (MTP) head added, so llama.cpp can run it with
self-speculative decoding (--spec-type draft-mtp). The original Saluki release has no MTP head.
| File | Underdog-Saluki-27B-1.0-IQ2-mix-MTP.gguf, 8.35 GB |
| sha256 | 98f6ebb527917a2541df8e667d51c3ec8a8bb135b44c606d40cc6ed924e89e52 |
| Main weights | all 851 tensors byte-identical to Saluki's Underdog-Saluki-27B-1.0-IQ2-mix.gguf (sha256 4a673518…5d9efb, revision 1336c0b) |
| Added | 15 tensors blk.64.* (the MTP layer, Q8_0/F32, ~0.45 GB); qwen35.block_count 64 → 65; qwen35.nextn_predict_layers = 1 |
| MTP head origin | Qwen3.8-27B's own MTP head as quantized in unsloth/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF, taken verbatim from BoldingBuilds/Ternary-Bonsai-2-27B-Abliterated-v2-PQ2_0-MTP-GGUF (sha256 a4e4c7b5…3ebebf8) |
Nothing was trained or re-quantized. Saluki is built from Qwen3.8-27B, so the head is the one that belongs to its base model.
Usage
Works with stock llama.cpp (tested on upstream 03aa006, 2026-10-08, just after release b11493)
and any build that has MTP drafting (--spec-type draft-mtp).
llama-server -m Underdog-Saluki-27B-1.0-IQ2-mix-MTP.gguf --jinja -ngl 99 -fa on \
-c 32768 -np 1 -ctk q8_0 -ctv q8_0 \
--spec-type draft-mtp --spec-draft-n-max 2
Sampling and thinking settings are the same as for Saluki (see its card). Without the
--spec-type flags the file runs like the original Saluki: llama.cpp logs the MTP tensors as unused,
skips them, and uses the same VRAM as the original file.
Measured (one machine)
RTX 3080 12 GB, WSL2, 32K context, q8_0 KV cache, -np 1, 6 prompts (code / Japanese / English,
thinking on and off), temperature 0.
Stock llama.cpp (upstream 03aa006):
| Original Saluki | This file, no --spec-type |
This file, MTP on | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generation (mean of 6) | 41.2 tok/s | 40.7 tok/s | 66.2 tok/s (58–75) |
| Draft acceptance | — | — | 62–96% |
| VRAM | 10.3 GB | 10.3 GB | 11.5 GB |
PrismML fork prism-b10754-2459f68 (PrismML-Eng/llama.cpp):
42.7 → 68.2 tok/s (58–77), acceptance 60–96%, 10.9 GB VRAM with MTP on.
- Not bit-identical to Saluki at temperature 0. The MTP path verifies drafts in batches, which changes floating-point accumulation order, so near-tied tokens sometimes flip (e.g. "約2万円" vs "2万円"). In 6 test prompts, 1 matched exactly and 5 diverged at a near-tie, after 9–95% of the text.
- 12 GB cards: keep the context at 32K. With 64K context + q8_0 KV + MTP the VRAM overflowed on this machine and speed fell to 24–29 tok/s.
- No new benchmarks: the quality numbers on Saluki's card are for the original file. Two small agent tasks (write a module with tests; fix three bugs) were passed through DeepSeek Harness with MTP on.
Reproduce
graft_mtp.py in this repo builds the file from the two upstream GGUFs (needs gguf-py from llama.cpp):
ALLOW_TYPE_MISMATCH=1 python graft_mtp.py <llama.cpp>/gguf-py \
Underdog-Saluki-27B-1.0-IQ2-mix.gguf \
Ternary-Bonsai-2-27B-Abliterated-v2-PQ2_0-MTP.gguf \
Underdog-Saluki-27B-1.0-IQ2-mix-MTP.gguf
Only the donor's blk.64.* tensors and MTP metadata are used. ALLOW_TYPE_MISMATCH=1 is needed
because the donor's main weights are a different quantization (PQ2_0); they are checked for matching
shapes and then ignored.
Credits and license
Apache-2.0, see LICENSE and NOTICE.
- Underdog Saluki 27B 1.0 by Underdog (ConwayResearch), built on Qwen3.8-27B and ISTA-DASLab's Qwen3.8-27B-GSQ-RCO-GGUF.
- Qwen3.8-27B and its MTP head by the Qwen team.
- MTP head GGUF quantization by Unsloth (
unsloth/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF). - The MTP grafting approach credited by BoldingBuilds to decent-jawfish, ProCreations and sudoingX/qwen38-mtp.
Not affiliated with or endorsed by Underdog/ConwayResearch, Qwen, Unsloth, PrismML or BoldingBuilds.
日本語メモ
Underdog Saluki 27B 1.0 に、Qwen3.8-27B 公式の MTP ヘッド（15 テンソル）を足しただけのファイルです。 本体の重みは元ファイルとバイト単位で同一です。普通の llama.cpp で動きます。RTX 3080 12GB で 41 → 66 tok/s（平均）になりました。 12GB のカードでは文脈を 32K に抑えてください（64K だと VRAM が溢れて遅くなります）。