Best Small Language Models for Nutanix Enterprise AI

Mistral AI stands out as an innovative startup in the realm of artificial intelligence, focusing on open-source generative solutions. The company provides a diverse array of customizable, enterprise-level AI offerings that can be implemented on various platforms, such as on-premises, cloud, edge, and devices. Among its key products are "Le Chat," a multilingual AI assistant aimed at boosting productivity in both personal and professional settings, and "La Plateforme," a platform for developers that facilitates the creation and deployment of AI-driven applications. With a strong commitment to transparency and cutting-edge innovation, Mistral AI has established itself as a prominent independent AI laboratory, actively contributing to the advancement of open-source AI and influencing policy discussions. Their dedication to fostering an open AI ecosystem underscores their role as a thought leader in the industry.

Mistral 7B is a language model with 7.3 billion parameters that demonstrates superior performance compared to larger models such as Llama 2 13B on a variety of benchmarks. It utilizes innovative techniques like Grouped-Query Attention (GQA) for improved inference speed and Sliding Window Attention (SWA) to manage lengthy sequences efficiently. Released under the Apache 2.0 license, Mistral 7B is readily available for deployment on different platforms, including both local setups and prominent cloud services. Furthermore, a specialized variant known as Mistral 7B Instruct has shown remarkable capabilities in following instructions, outperforming competitors like Llama 2 13B Chat in specific tasks. This versatility makes Mistral 7B an attractive option for developers and researchers alike.

Introducing Mistral NeMo, our latest and most advanced small model yet, featuring a cutting-edge 12 billion parameters and an expansive context length of 128,000 tokens, all released under the Apache 2.0 license. Developed in partnership with NVIDIA, Mistral NeMo excels in reasoning, world knowledge, and coding proficiency within its category. Its architecture adheres to industry standards, making it user-friendly and a seamless alternative for systems currently utilizing Mistral 7B. To facilitate widespread adoption among researchers and businesses, we have made available both pre-trained base and instruction-tuned checkpoints under the same Apache license. Notably, Mistral NeMo incorporates quantization awareness, allowing for FP8 inference without compromising performance. The model is also tailored for diverse global applications, adept in function calling and boasting a substantial context window. When compared to Mistral 7B, Mistral NeMo significantly outperforms in understanding and executing detailed instructions, showcasing enhanced reasoning skills and the ability to manage complex multi-turn conversations. Moreover, its design positions it as a strong contender for multi-lingual tasks, ensuring versatility across various use cases.

Mistral AI has launched two cutting-edge models designed for on-device computing and edge applications, referred to as "les Ministraux": Ministral 3B and Ministral 8B. These innovative models redefine the standards of knowledge, commonsense reasoning, function-calling, and efficiency within the sub-10B category. They are versatile enough to be utilized or customized for a wide range of applications, including managing complex workflows and developing specialized task-focused workers. Capable of handling up to 128k context length (with the current version supporting 32k on vLLM), Ministral 8B also incorporates a unique interleaved sliding-window attention mechanism to enhance both speed and memory efficiency during inference. Designed for low-latency and compute-efficient solutions, these models excel in scenarios such as offline translation, smart assistants that don't rely on internet connectivity, local data analysis, and autonomous robotics. Moreover, when paired with larger language models like Mistral Large, les Ministraux can effectively function as streamlined intermediaries, facilitating function-calling within intricate multi-step workflows, thereby expanding their applicability across various domains. This combination not only enhances performance but also broadens the scope of what can be achieved with AI in edge computing.

Mistral AI has unveiled two cutting-edge models specifically designed for on-device computing and edge use cases, collectively referred to as "les Ministraux": Ministral 3B and Ministral 8B. These innovative models stand out due to their capabilities in knowledge retention, commonsense reasoning, function-calling, and overall efficiency, all while remaining within the sub-10B parameter range. They boast support for a context length of up to 128k, making them suitable for a diverse range of applications such as on-device translation, offline smart assistants, local analytics, and autonomous robotics. Notably, Ministral 8B incorporates an interleaved sliding-window attention mechanism, which enhances both the speed and memory efficiency of inference processes. Both models are adept at serving as intermediaries in complex multi-step workflows, skillfully managing functions like input parsing, task routing, and API interactions based on user intent, all while minimizing latency and operational costs. Benchmark results reveal that les Ministraux consistently exceed the performance of similar models across a variety of tasks, solidifying their position in the market. As of October 16, 2024, these models are now available for developers and businesses, with Ministral 8B being offered at a competitive rate of $0.1 for every million tokens utilized. This pricing structure enhances accessibility for users looking to integrate advanced AI capabilities into their solutions.

On September 17, 2024, Mistral AI revealed a series of significant updates designed to improve both the accessibility and efficiency of their AI products. Among these updates was the introduction of a complimentary tier on "La Plateforme," their serverless platform that allows for the tuning and deployment of Mistral models as API endpoints, which gives developers a chance to innovate and prototype at zero cost. In addition, Mistral AI announced price reductions across their complete model range, highlighted by a remarkable 50% decrease for Mistral Nemo and an 80% cut for Mistral Small and Codestral, thereby making advanced AI solutions more affordable for a wider audience. The company also launched Mistral Small v24.09, a model with 22 billion parameters that strikes a favorable balance between performance and efficiency, making it ideal for various applications such as translation, summarization, and sentiment analysis. Moreover, they released Pixtral 12B, a vision-capable model equipped with image understanding features, for free on "Le Chat," allowing users to analyze and caption images while maintaining strong text-based performance. This suite of updates reflects Mistral AI's commitment to democratizing access to powerful AI technologies for developers everywhere.

Gemma represents a collection of cutting-edge, lightweight open models that are built upon the same research and technology underlying the Gemini models. Created by Google DeepMind alongside various teams at Google, the inspiration for Gemma comes from the Latin word "gemma," which translates to "precious stone." In addition to providing our model weights, we are also offering tools aimed at promoting developer creativity, encouraging collaboration, and ensuring the ethical application of Gemma models. Sharing key technical and infrastructural elements with Gemini, which stands as our most advanced AI model currently accessible, Gemma 2B and 7B excel in performance within their weight categories when compared to other open models. Furthermore, these models can conveniently operate on a developer's laptop or desktop, demonstrating their versatility. Impressively, Gemma not only outperforms significantly larger models on crucial benchmarks but also maintains our strict criteria for delivering safe and responsible outputs, making it a valuable asset for developers.

Llama (Large Language Model Meta AI) stands as a cutting-edge foundational large language model aimed at helping researchers push the boundaries of their work within this area of artificial intelligence. By providing smaller yet highly effective models like Llama, the research community can benefit even if they lack extensive infrastructure, thus promoting greater accessibility in this dynamic and rapidly evolving domain. Creating smaller foundational models such as Llama is advantageous in the landscape of large language models, as it demands significantly reduced computational power and resources, facilitating the testing of innovative methods, confirming existing research, and investigating new applications. These foundational models leverage extensive unlabeled datasets, making them exceptionally suitable for fine-tuning across a range of tasks. We are offering Llama in multiple sizes (7B, 13B, 33B, and 65B parameters), accompanied by a detailed Llama model card that outlines our development process while adhering to our commitment to Responsible AI principles. By making these resources available, we aim to empower a broader segment of the research community to engage with and contribute to advancements in AI.